


Mr. Fahrenheit

by PunkHazard



Series: Kent [5]
Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Post-Canon, Slice of Life, alien doppelgänger funtimes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-13
Updated: 2019-04-28
Packaged: 2019-10-09 13:42:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 20
Words: 66,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17407967
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PunkHazard/pseuds/PunkHazard
Summary: Not for the first time, Kepler internally mourns the days he could end a conversation with 'It's none of your business, shut up and do your job.'





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> title change cause i realized it's a LOT more kepler-centric than i initially expected & it's better to get it over with now 🙃 sorry for the confusion!

Four days out from the Hephaestus, the Urania's vital systems start shutting down. Hera loses communication with more distant parts of the ship when she's concentrated her processing power to any particular section, reduced to running two or three sectors at a time and cycling between them to maintain habitable levels of oxygen, humidity, temperature.

It's not, Jacobi had assured the crew after taking a look at the status reports, through any fault of Hera's. Detaching the Urania had taken a serious toll on its functions, despite everything they'd done to try to preserve them, and she was never designed to run a ship as large and as new as the Urania for any extended amount of time. 'Like trying to play a Gameboy Color cartridge on a bootleg Wii,' he'd said. 'Kind of. Hera's actually more than advanced enough to run the systems, especially with this hardware, but she's not calibrated to it so we're just gonna keep running into these... little jams.'

Two weeks after that, Minkowski leans over his shoulder as he and Lovelace tap away at the console, eyes on his screen but just barely comprehending the tens of thousands of lines of code he's scrolling through. "Can't _you_ do the calibrations?" she asks, a desperate edge to her voice.

"Can I calibrate a GBC cartridge to a Wii?" Jacobi parrots, mocking. Then he pauses, turning to look at one of Hera's sensors. "Did Alana leave notes on how to do that?"

"No," sighs Hera, "I've been going through her files and there are no instructions on how to do that."

He gives Minkowski a pointed look before he turns back to the console, enters a command, and purses his lips. The lights on an adjoining control panel flicker. "Then no, I can't. We're just gonna have to do some finagling until we see what works."

"How," Minkowski growls through clenched teeth, eyes darting between him and Lovelace, "are you two so _calm_ about this?" 

"Only thing that could really happen from here on out," Jacobi deadpans, still focused on the screen in front of him, "is we get this working and live, or we all die. Panicking's not gonna help." 

The other reason, that he _doesn't_ say out loud, is that he's been put in far more dangerous situations with far worse odds. Thanks to a certain colonel, he'd come out of them alive, nerves mostly deadened to the prospect of imminent death. 

Lovelace flashes him a knowing, reproachful look when he glances at her. "Do you think Pryce could do it?"

"She's been reading up," Hera informs them, "and all the neural pathways are still there, but... this is essentially the first time she's seeing any of my documentation. It'll take time for her to make anything of it."

"More time than we've got," Lovelace concurs. "So in the meantime, I'm gonna see what nonessential functions and sectors we can shut down."

"For one thing, the labs." Jacobi tabs over to another panel and comments out a few lines, shortening two recursive loops. In the distance, they hear an area of the ship powering down. "Consolidate food and supplies to Storage Area 1C, reroute all the water to the one shower and bathroom. We can all have a little sleepover in the living area and seal off the crew quarters until we figure out how to stabilize the Urania. Twelve hours enough to get all that done?"

On the Hephaestus, Kepler had Isabel acting under Jacobi's orders multiple times. Daniel would defer to her when the situation called for it, and that dynamic is easy enough to fall back into now. Waiting on a nod from Minkowski, Lovelace stands. "Should be."

"Alright," says Jacobi, pushing his own seat away from the console, "then let's do it."

* * *

Two hours into moving all their supplies into the closest storage area to the living area, Lovelace finally notices an insistent buzz from the direction of the bridge, muffled through the hatch leading inside. "Hera," she says, toeing a cardboard box full of dried and vacuum-sealed grains closer to the kitchen, "what am I hearing?"

Lovelace waits on a quiet whir as Hera finally taps back into the command center, her attention having been focused on Storage while they moved. "Oh! Um, from the-- the bridge? It's--"

Her voice cuts out, the sudden radio silence lasting for a good ten seconds before Lovelace prompts her again, a slow, "Heeeera?"

"I think," Hera says haltingly, opening the door for her, "you should come inside, Captain."

"What's going on, Hera?"

"It's a hail." Unexpected hails have never boded well for this crew. If it's not an alien doppelgänger it's Marcus Cutter, and the dread is fully apparent in Hera's voice when she announces, "From the Sol."

Lovelace, by contrast, remains perfectly calm. "Well," she says, sounding simultaneously amused and annoyed, "this can't be new to you. Open the channel."

"Should I get Commander Minkowski first, or--"

"Let's see what it is first. Don't want everyone freaking out at once."

"U.S.S. Urania, this is the U.S.S. Sol." The voice that rings through the channel is bright and clear, no less professional for the audible cheer in it. "We are on an approach vector and matching speeds to your current velocity. Request permission to dock."

"Is that," says Lovelace.

"Dr. Maxwell?!"

"Hi, Hera! I'm with Colonel Kepler, he caught me up on what's been happening. It's just been the two of us for a couple weeks, so you wouldn't _believe_ how happy I am to hear your voice." She scoffs at an indignant _hey!_ in the background. "Please, Colonel, you can't possibly be surprised."

There's a brief shuffle on the other side of the comms, and Kepler's voice comes through next, as aggressively slow and overbearing as ever. "We are picking up some _interesting_ readings from the Urania. You are aware that it can function properly in all sectors with the basic A.I. that we arrived on the Hephaestus with?" A pause. "Unless you've overwritten the maintenance program to make space for the Hephaestus's mother program, in which case Dr. Maxwell tells me that Hera miiight be experiencing some difficulties in proper management of the vessel?"

"Colonel, do you really think it's best to _antagonize_ them in your first transmission--"

"I'm not _antagonizing_ , I'm _concerned_ \--"

"Wow," says Lovelace, her voice flat, "I don't miss this."

Kepler instantly wraps up his bickering with Maxwell, turning his attention back to the Urania. "I'm sure you have a decent idea of what might be happening right now, Captain Lovelace."

"Yep. Alien doubles."

"Correct! Now, normally I'd be opposed to allowing alien life-forms with potentially nefarious intentions to head back to Earth, but now that I _am_ one, I'm not feeling any nefarious intent--"

"Other than the ones you started with," Lovelace interjects.

"-- other than the ones I started with. Same goes for Maxwell." A beat. Kepler exhales, abruptly shifts his tone to something more serious. " _This_ U.S.S. Sol will be able to make it back to Earth regardless of whether or not you allow us to dock, but Maxwell says you folks could use a hand, and you've still got our Jacobi."

"U.S.S. Sol," Lovelace says, "prepare to dock, but you do _not_ have permission to come aboard before I speak with Commander Minkowski."

"Wilco, Captain."

* * *

"I," Minkowski says to Jacobi and Lovelace, "think we should let them onboard." 

Eiffel had elected to continue moving supplies, given that he's still working through audio logs from the _beginning_ of his rotation on the Hephaestus and hadn't yet reached (in his own words) Daniel "Boom Boom Wow" Jacobi and Colonel Warren J. Dickbag. 'I don't know them,' he'd said, a marked difference from the Eiffel who'd often insist on giving his input where it wasn't particularly wanted, 'so I'll leave this choice to the people who do.'

As expected, Jacobi scoffs, shaking his head as if he can't _believe_ her naiveté. "Are you _crazy_? Of course we don't let them on the ship!"

"Not even Dr. Maxwell?" asks Hera.

"Uh, that's _not_ Maxwell. It might sound like her, it might look like her, but it's _not_ her."

Lovelace cuts in before he can continue, her tone dangerously even as she fixes a hard stare on him. "Even if it's not her, it'll have her memories." She tilts her head back, raises one eyebrow. "It'll have her capabilities, and right now we need someone _capable_ of calibrating Hera to the Urania or we won't even make another lightyear before this ship falls apart."

"It sounds like they're offering to solve our problem, so I say we let them." Minkowski crosses her arms over her chest, sounding very self-assured, in Jacobi's opinion, for someone who'd dealt with Colonel Warren Kepler for any extended period of time. "We can set terms for their disembarkation," she says gently, "and whatever else there is to say about him, Kepler's a man of his word."

"Get it in writing," Daniel mutters, "and read _every single bit of it._ No loopholes. He can rules-lawyer his way into just about anything."

Hera clears her throat. "They did also say that we 'have their Jacobi'."

"Oh, not this again. I _really_ don't need another identity crisis in space."

"Listen, Jacobi, you don't have to see them if you don't want to." Minkowski. Understanding, but stern. "But if we can do something about the Urania, we have to."

"Sorry," says Hera, almost too quietly to be heard. 

"No--" Minkowski raises both hands, a demand for everyone to, however briefly, shut up and let her think. "Hera," she says, grinding the name out through her clenched teeth before she finally loosens her jaw, her shoulders, "don't apologize. We're a crew. We _help_ each other. None of us are perfect at everything we do, and when that happens, we step up and _help_ each other. This isn't any different. Okay?"

"Okay," says Hera. "Thanks, Commander."

"Well," Jacobi snarls, but he looks between Minkowski and Lovelace and one of Hera's sensors, and waves a frantic hand at the control panel, "it's your funeral! I'm not going out there."

Then Minkowski opens the communications channel. 

They're arguing on the other side again-- over something philosophical, from Maxwell's tone. It's one of the few kinds of conversations Kepler had no interest in exerting control over, considering the topic at hand is usually irrelevant to mission success. 'If you could travel to ancient Rome, what one modern device would you take with you?' or 'If a trolley were about to hit five people, but you can change its track to hit only one person instead, what would you do?'

The two of them used to spar over one question for _hours_. Daniel could tune them out instantly.

"There's no _scientific_ proof of a 'soul,'" Maxwell asserts, sounding heated, "so the _essence_ of a person is the network of synapses that constitutes their memories, experiences, and personality. Souls are irrelevant. All we are is a brain--"

"So, what, people don't include their _bodies_? Even AIs have mainframes, servers, _physical_ containers--"

"A physical container is--"

"Irrelevant, you've _said_ , and I disagree--"

"Yeah," Minkowski says, sotto voce, "don't miss this at all." She makes the mistake of glancing at Jacobi, who's looking at the console with the kind of despairing hunger she's only ever seen on infomercials about starving puppies, or on cats who've eaten the kibble from the center of their bowls. 

Lovelace has one hand on his shoulder, and she squeezes hard enough that his knee buckles and he has to catch himself as he's dragged forcibly back to the present. " _Ow!_ Hey, okay, I'm here."

All arguing on the other end grinds to a halt at the sound of his voice. Maxwell speaks up first, Kepler falling conspicuously silent when she says, "Daniel?"

"Hey," Jacobi answers, and he bites down on the inside of his cheek to keep himself from calling her Alana, "so, we're gonna let you guys onboard. But there're some conditions."

"Sure." 

"Minkowski'll hammer them out with you."

There's a short silence, the kind that means Maxwell wants to say something else but will more likely keep it to herself until she can speak with him alone. Then, softly, "Cool." 

Jacobi steps away from the console. He crosses his arms over his chest and shoves his hands under his armpits, gnawing on his bottom lip as Kepler elbows into the conversation and insists that Lovelace participate. 'She's your best negotiator,' he says, jovial. 'I _like_ a challenge.'


	2. Chapter 2

The terms are as follows: Maxwell can come aboard to calibrate Hera and transfer whatever research she'd done in orbit around Wolf 359 onto the Sol. Kepler can come aboard to assist her with anything that she might need and reclaim whatever personal belongings might be left on the ship. Jacobi's free to leave with them if he wishes, but Lovelace had threatened Kepler with grievous bodily harm if she thought that he was using an untoward amount of force to sway Jacobi's decision.

'No chance of that,' Kepler had commented mildly, 'Mister Jacobi is free to do as he wishes.'

"Makes sense that they'd offer to help us," Jacobi says to Lovelace, hovering by the airlock while Hera unlocks it. "Not-Maxwell wants her research, not-Kepler wants his whiskey..."

"Didn't you launch that stuff into deep space?" she murmurs back, definitely not the only one with traumatic memories of that particular incident as evidenced by the stink-eye Minkowski levels at her. "He made Eiffel retrieve it? All the alcohol boiled out in the vacuum and the liquid separated? Totally undrinkable?"

Jacobi chuckles at the memory. "Oh, he kept the _bottle_ for effect," he whispers conspiratorially back, "but he's got a year's worth of the stuff squirreled away somewhere on the ship."

Lovelace imagines a whole mound of vacuum-sealed bags of Balvenie, Kepler lounging atop it like a space dragon guarding its hoard. There's a not-insignificant chance that he'd used up his entire allowance of miscellaneous goods on his whiskey. "Think we can find it first?"

"If he finds out we touched his stock," Jacobi shoots back, grinning now, "this might not be a bloodless exchange." 

The expression slips off his face when Maxwell and Kepler actually step onto the Urania. Maxwell looks much the same: she's in one of the standard-issue one-size-fits-all jumpsuits and a labcoat-- one with Pryce's name markered off the breast pocket. She waves at Hera and nods at Jacobi, lightly touching his elbow as she passes him on the way to the bridge.

Kepler greets Jacobi, Lovelace and Minkowski with a wary nod of his own but he also looks much the same as Jacobi had last seen him (face shaved, hair slicked, meticulously cleaned up after his time in the brig), except for the prosthetic arm he's no longer sporting. Lovelace gives him a quick once-over, meeting his wolfish flash of teeth (only someone _really_ generous could call it a smile) with one of her own as she accompanies him to the main living area.

Minkowski looks over her shoulder to Maxwell's retreating back and taps Jacobi on the shoulder, wincing sympathetically when he startles. "Jacobi?"

"I-- yeah, I'll go keep an eye on-- you know, not-Maxwell." 

"I'm gonna check on Doug." Minkowski shifts her weight between her feet, brows furrowing at a mild distortion in the speakers. The temptation to keep her eyes on Maxwell briefly wars with the impulse to let her have some time with Jacobi and Hera without her murderer in the room, so she fixes a look on Jacobi instead. "Keep Hera safe, Jacobi. Don't let Maxwell do anything to her she doesn't agree to."

"Yeah, Commander. Wouldn't dream of it."

* * *

Maxwell's within two feet of the control panel in the bridge when it crackles, the screen goes dark, and the keyboard spits vicious sparks in her general direction. "Wait," Hera's voice reverberates through the speakers just as Jacobi catches up, "I changed my mind. I'm not okay with this."

"Hera?" Maxwell says slowly, reaching for the console anyway. "Look, I can help--"

" _No!_ " The keyboard sparks again. 

"This has to get done, Hera."

"I don't care. Leave me alone." 

Maxwell doesn't answer, frozen in front of the console. Her expression is carefully neutral, dark eyes narrowed. 

"You _used_ me," Hera says when the silence stretches on just a few seconds too long. "You treated me like-- like some kind of computer you could just turn on and off." The distortion in her voice ramps up. "You don't get to do it again. I know I agreed to this, but--"

Maxwell takes a single, supposedly calming breath-- and _snaps_. "That's _irrational_ \--"

Jacobi grimaces, not partial to the idea of getting caught between them, but he pulls Maxwell back by the elbow. He tries not to let it hurt as much as it does-- she might not _be_ Maxwell, but she certainly thinks she is, and she must also have the memory of him promising to have her back. 

"You want to know the worst thing about SI-5, Hera?" he cuts in, letting Alana go and peering up at where Hera's visual sensors are set discreetly into the corner of the wall. He can relate so well to her in the moment that it's almost physically painful. 

She makes a disgusted sound, but gives in to her curiosity and asks, "What is it?"

"No one ever forgets we're talking to a person."

"What? No, you--"

Maxwell picks up Jacobi's train of thought instantly, effortlessly. "Hera," she says, "listen to me." She waits for a second more of Hera's reluctant silence, and sighs. "With Goddard, people are _meant_ to be used. It's... kind of why I fit right in. Everyone is an asset or a liability, everyone's got their function, their place, and their rank. If we're all working to spec, it's fine. If we're not, we get... debugged, or deleted. It's the same for _everyone_. You. Me. Even the colonel." 

"Everyone's got buttons, even us," Jacobi emphasizes, not wholly bitter-- sounding almost cheerful to be back in his former company even knowing she's an alien facsimile of his favorite partner in crime, "and Kepler knows how to push 'em. Maxwell really did like you, though. More than anyone else we've ever had to deal with." 

Hera has the distinct impression that Jacobi would rather die than ever truly become a liability to Kepler even now (especially now), but she judiciously doesn't comment on it. She asks instead, "Why are you two still _on his side_? After everything he put you through? After everything he kept from you?"

"Hey! Who says I'm on his side?" 

Maxwell exhales, a harsh puff through her nose. "Hera," she says, breathtakingly matter-of-fact, "I used him, too. I always knew where I stood with Kepler, and as long I did what he and Goddard asked of me, as long as I was an _asset_ , they gave me the resources to do what I love. It was never about _sides_ , it's just that right now, it's in both our best interests to help you."

"Because it's expedient?" Hera challenges, her voice rough. "Because that's all that matters to you, right?"

Maxwell turns a fierce look on Jacobi (of all the people in the room who don't deserve that expression), and then Hera, her voice clipped. "I don't regret working for the SI-5. It was the best time of my life."

Jacobi stares at her, biting the inside of his cheek to keep himself from chiming in, from agreeing, from gleefully flaunting their professionalism and ruthlessness. He should be ashamed of how easily he falls back into this stupid, inescapable orbit around Warren Kepler, but all he can see is a galaxy in the shape of Goddard Futuristics, drawn into the pull of a Marcus Cutter-shaped black hole. 

(The analogy is... stupid. It's stupid. It's stupid, but Jacobi can't help but think of Warren Kepler, red giant, burning out, consuming anything that comes a little too close. But you stay just far away enough, you stabilize in his _habitable zone_ , and you become more than you ever thought possible. You start needing him, because everything that you are now needs him, it all exists because of him and it'll all die without him.

He didn't even mean for it to happen. None of them did. Kepler just burned with his own unstoppable kind of nuclear fusion, and Jacobi came alive in that light. Kepler would've burned regardless, but Daniel needed him. 

It's a stupid analogy.) 

"How can you even say that?" Hera asks, and there's a sad, wounded-animal pitch to her voice.

"Well," Maxwell says, "Hera, I did get to meet you."

Immediately, harshly: "Stop it."

"You've never been anything less than a whole person to me," Maxwell says in her most patient, soothing voice. The one that could put Jacobi to sleep if he didn't like hearing it so much. "I betrayed your trust, and I'm sorry. I understand if you never want anything to do with either me or Kepler again. But until we can go our separate ways, I can help." A smile. "It would actually be my pleasure to make this trip as easy and painless for you as I possibly can."

"Oh," Hera says, almost a sigh, "come on. You're not even the Maxwell that did all that to me."

Jacobi knows an olive branch when he hears one, and he hopes that Maxwell will take it. Take the peace offering, laugh it off, bury the truth and let it go. But he also knows Alana Maxwell, and there's no reason for her to lie in this moment. She's never liked it.

"Hera," Maxwell says, her brows furrowing, "are you a totally unrelated being from when you were Hera, mother program on the Hephaestus, just because your hardware's different?" 

"I... suppose not." 

Jacobi's pretty sure he should step in and stop this. Getting the Urania stable should be much higher priority than whatever political convictions Maxwell feels the need to share, but she's a _scientist_ and she makes it all make so much _sense_. It's easy enough to admit that maybe he needs to hear this too.

"If we cloned your personality and put it on another station," Maxwell suggests, "would that Hera believe that the things you've done on the Hephaestus weren't her?"

"But that's different."

"No. It's not. Whatever you have to say to that Maxwell, you can say to _this_ Maxwell. I take full responsibility for _my_ actions." 

Whatever you have to say to that Maxwell, you can say to _this_ Maxwell. 

Jacobi wonders which aspect of Maxwell's personality this one is exhibiting when it all sounds exactly like her. _Her_ choice of words, _her_ quiet equanimity, _her_ clear-eyed vision of the Truth. The Dear Listeners seem to have upped their game from the days of the Tiamat; they've had plenty of practice.

"I'm still angry at you," Hera says after a long pause. She sighs. "But I don't want to be."

"Will you let me help you?"

"I need some time to think about it."

"That's all I wanted to hear, Hera."

Jacobi waits for the lull in conversation to become comfortable before he tugs lightly on Maxwell's arm, lowering his volume to pitch it just below the threshold of Hera's sensors. Part of him hopes his voice is low enough to blend into the Urania's background noise and _neither_ of them will hear him, but Maxwell tilts her head to listen. "Is that why you were so upset about my doppelgänger?" he asks.

Maxwell exhales again, her cheeks puffing out with the force of it. Two emotionally-charged conversations in one day. She's visibly beginning to miss Alone Time With Colonel Kepler, who had at least mostly left her to her own devices. Alana turns to address one of Hera's sensors. "Could you give us a moment, Hera? I'll talk to you soon."

"Sure."

Turning on Jacobi, Maxwell puts both hands on his shoulders and meets his gaze, dead serious. "Yes, Jacobi, that's why I was upset about your doppelgänger." She pats his cheeks, pinches them, happily stretching them as if to assure herself that he's real. "He was still _you_. We promised to have each other's backs. And I'm still me, Alana Maxwell, even if my hardware's a little different."

Jacobi's expression crumples when she releases him, eyes and cheeks stinging, but he doesn't turn away. "Goddamnit," he manages to choke out, but her name comes out as a gasp, "Alana."

In the absence of anyone else, she smiles, bumps their foreheads together, and laughs. No need to play at professionalism when it's just the two of them. "I missed you, Daniel."

He wraps his arms around her ribs, crushing her against his chest, and buries his face in her shoulder. Her being taller than him has never been more convenient. "So... that's it? I'm allowed to be happy about this?" Jacobi chokes back a laugh, sniffs, rubbing his nose into her labcoat. "I get to be happy that you're back? That _he's_ back? That things just worked out like that for me?"

"Daniel," says Maxwell, momentarily torn between telling him off for getting snot on her jacket and pulling him even closer, "I can tell you with absolute certainty that I'd be pretty hurt if you weren't happy to see us." Softer: "Even if my hypothesis is wrong, and I don't think it is, I know that if some version of me could be there for you in some capacity, even if _I_ couldn't be there for you, that's what I'd want. I think Kepler feels the same way."

"What the hell," Jacobi mumbles, and months of being afraid that his life's gone back to the way it was before SI-5 (back to a time when _nothing_ ever just worked out for him) begin to slip off his shoulders, "I'll take it."

* * *

"You should let her." Kepler eyes a tiny red LED that indicates Hera's attention in his sector as he lowers a duffel bag to the floor. He straightens, leans back, and cracks his spine. "Calibrate you, I mean."

Hera scoffs, secretly pleased at the way he absently rolls his shoulder, the stump of his right arm braced against his collar as he stretches and straightens his left. Favoring one arm for months on end can't have been easy, but she's determined not to pity him-- which is just as well, seeing as Kepler's just as determined not to be pitied. "What makes you think your input is welcome here, Kepler?" 

"Because I think you're looking for a reason to be alright with it," he drawls, "and I can give you one." He's been packing his own things (whatever's left that hadn't been jettisoned into space with his whiskey that one time), but also helpfully moving boxes back to storage.

"Yeah, right."

He looks directly into one of her cameras, a small smile playing at the corners of his lips. Eye contact power-play. Of course he'd know the configuration on the Urania. Feet shoulder-width apart, shoulders back. "The Urania was programmed on a platform just far enough removed from the Hephaestus that these issues will keep cropping up unless something is done about it," he says, facts he knows they can all agree on. "Jacobi could get your personality onboard, but he's no Maxwell."

"I don't want her digging around in my brain again," Hera tells him, with a note of finality. " _Especially_ not with you here."

"Dr. Maxwell has done everything in her power to respect your autonomy. The only times she didn't were when I gave her the choice between bringing you in line, or _deactivating_ you." She shouldn't have underestimated his tenacity. Or his ability to influence. Kepler continues: "Maxwell isn't the kind of person who'd blame me for her own choices, so I'm telling you instead. That? Was all me. We... are no longer employees of Goddard Futuristics. She's acting on her own right now, and she wants to help _you_."

Hera suspects, privately, that he's just running his mouth to rest a few minutes while Lovelace continues to poke around in Storage. But he also seems to be in a chatty mood, less smug command and more calculating reconnaissance. Give information to gain information. She has no intention of allowing the opportunity to pass her by. "I don't understand how she could just... _reprogram_ me like that. Force me to betray my crew. I thought we were _friends_." 

"Again, Hera, it's because you're a person, and so is she." He tilts his head, the hard line of his jaw flexing while he seems to mull his next words over. "People can be convinced," he says slowly, "manipulated, coerced, and tricked into doing things they wouldn't otherwise do. There are entire institutions dedicated to studying that kind of thing."

"I bet you'd know."

"You'd be right! Flatter them, negotiate with them, reason with them, _scare the living daylights out of 'em_ , I can 'reprogram' just about anyone I've ever met simply by running my mouth, and I'll remind you that that includes you." He huffs, swipes up his duffel by the strap and slings it over his right shoulder. "I am very, very good at making certain kinds of people do exactly what I need them to. Doctor Maxwell just happens to be very good at making... 'you' kinds of people do what I want you to do."

"That's awful." Hera's voice follows him past the crew quarters as he moves toward the docking bay. "I can't believe you can just... _say_ that and not be ashamed of yourself."

"I am what I've made myself to be, Hera." 

"But you changed your mind. You came around."

Kepler pauses at the hatch between Sol and Urania. "I _thought_ that I could follow through on what Cutter was setting up to do," he says, "but once I got the full debrief, there wasn't really any question that I'd have to try and stop it."

"But why? You don't _care_ about other people."

"I _care_... about my _team_." 

"So. Just Jacobi at the time." Hera sounds resigned, but not particularly angry-- it's what she was expecting. "That's simultaneously sentimental, horrible, and unsurprising of you." 

"I saw him headed back to Earth with you all and thought, That idiot's looking to get himself turned into an alien zombie." He's distant; thoughtful. He'd always loved debate, philosophy; verbally sparring with people who are several magnitudes smarter than he'll ever be. Being shut down, interrogated and argued with sharpened his own rhetoric in a way that mindless agreement never could. Hera might not be enjoying this, but Warren Kepler _lives_ for it. "I'd already lost _one_ right hand."

He ducks through the door back to the Sol, shutting it before Hera can respond. Kepler doesn't take long on the other ship, and when he returns to the Urania, she accosts him again, following him back to Storage. "So it's just about using him again," she says. "Haven't you ever considered that social creatures, which you humans are, are fundamentally designed to value cooperation? Maybe your base human instincts told you that you wanted to be a part of a pack again?"

"People like to dress up _interpersonal relations_ like it's anything _more_ than people using each other." Jacobi and Maxwell had fit that role perfectly. Their expertise, their headstrong pride, their willingness to both argue with him and fall in line when he required it of them. "The question isn't 'Am I being used,' it's ' _How_ am I being used'. Am I being used _well_? Am I being used in a way that I find _acceptable_? In a way that gets me _closer_ to my goals? And once you find out how you're _being_ used, you can think about how you want to use everyone else."

"No. I've _never_ \--"

"Don't you like to feel _useful_ , Hera?" Before Goddard, Maxwell and Jacobi had been chained, practically imprisoned by the everyday social paradigms normal people are held to. Supervisors who wouldn't allow them to _push_ , small-minded commanders who didn't know how to appreciate the terrific utility of their skills. They weren't alone in that: before Goddard, Kepler had just passed the Illinois _Bar exam_. 

She doesn't answer him.

"I do," he admits as he walks, and Warren makes sure that it doesn't sound like a confession. "If I'm being _useful_ , doesn't it stand to reason that I'm being _of use_ to somebody else? Goddard used me well. When that stopped being true, it wasn't difficult to decide that my compliance would end." 

Hera takes a moment to process that, run it through what she knows of him (almost nothing) and what she knows of Jacobi and Maxwell (also almost nothing). She hasn't known enough people to really know Kepler's deal, but she is, at least, almost omniscient on the station. "You try so hard not to be a person," she muses, "like it's beneath you to be vulnerable. To just _like_ people for no reason. You can give us all the cold rationalization you want, Kepler. We got a look at the real you, cooperating with the good guys, and you can't take that back."

"Call it 'cooperation'," he mutters, a little resentful at her implication that he might qualify as a human being, "and suddenly 'people mutually using each other' has positive connotations." 

"What was that?"

"Hera, Maxwell's offering her help. Take it. Use it. Get your crew home, safe and sound." This time, Warren smiles. It reaches his eyes because he's a _hell_ of an actor, but it's far from real and he knows Hera isn't fooled. Prefers it that way, really. "And don't feel obligated to be grateful; we're using you to get back to Earth, too. My trip would be... very _unpleasant_ without my whiskey."

"How do you manage to make helping people sound so selfish?"

"Even the most altruistic human around gets an endorphin hit out of helping others," he says, evidently bored of the conversation now that it's come to accusing him of possessing humanity. "If they didn't, what's the point of any good deed? Don't pretend you don't know this, Hera. It's beneath you."

Hera huffs, but she doesn't protest again. "You're the _worst_ , Kepler."

"Seconded," Lovelace chimes in, shifting a box of dried mangoes between her hands. "I have no idea what you're talking about," she says, motioning for Kepler to rejoin her in Storage, "but seconded."

Kepler fixes his eyes on another one of Hera's cameras as he falls into step next to Lovelace. "Do you want to tell Maxwell, or should I?"

"I'll do it myself," Hera says, and her subsequent, "Thanks!" sounds more like a curse.


	3. Chapter 3

"Okay," says Hera.

Jacobi looks up from the handheld game he's playing, a toy Maxwell had turned up on the Sol and generously gifted to him while she browsed Hera's original documentation, idly matching it to the Urania's systems. "Okay?" he repeats.

"Okay, _Dr. Maxwell_ ," Hera says, "I'll cooperate."

They look at each other, Jacobi cocking one eyebrow and Maxwell flashing him a grimace. "Um," she says cautiously, "Hera?"

"Yes?"

"I'm really happy to hear that, but what changed your mind?"

"I spoke to Kepler."

Jacobi groans.

"I know! I know. But what he said... was right." She makes an annoyed sound at the sight of Jacobi's expression, and rambles on. "I mean, not all of it, he's _so_ full of it, but I want to get my crew back to Earth. I want all of them to be alive when we get there. If I have to let you do this to make sure that happens, I will."

Maxwell forces herself to ignore the brief flash of anguish on Jacobi's face. Really, anything to do with Kepler's been prompting that look today, but they'll have to address it later. "Okay," she says. "Okay, Hera. I'll make it happen. I promise."

"Thanks, Dr. Maxwell."

Alana immediately turns back to the console, taps a few keystrokes to access the Urania's root directory. She isolates the sectors where Hera's stored, and opens the first folder. "I'm going to have to put you on auto-pilot to do this."

"You know, that reminds me of the last time I was on auto-pilot," Hera tells her. "Jacobi staged a counter-coup."

Daniel squawks. "Snitch!"

"Wait. Really?"

"Kepler didn't tell you?" Jacobi asks. He'd figured the colonel would be complaining about it the whole time. 

"Well, I didn't ask." Maxwell smiles, reaching for his shoulder and shaking it. "Did you use the Antikythera--"

"Yeah, you drilled it into my head!"

"Daniel, I'm so proud of you!" 

"I tried to kill the colonel."

"Opinion remains unchanged."

Hera interrupts them with an indignant, "Hey!" 

"I mean--" Maxwell's hand flies off Jacobi's shoulder and she instantly puts on her sternest, most unamused expression. Clears her throat. "That's terrible! How could you!"

" _Please_ ," says Hera, "just put me under."

* * *

Jacobi's been tasked with bringing Hera online gradually, her autonomous functions first, testing them in the parts of the craft that Maxwell's adjusted. It mostly involves clicking an icon, pointing a piece of software in the right direction, then playing Solitaire for five minutes while Hera runs through her paces.

They've been at work for nearly an hour when Jacobi finally says, "How fucked up is it that I missed that?"

Maxwell never stops typing, her eyes still fixed on the screen in front of her, but she doesn't miss a beat. Processing power to spare. "Missed what?"

"The way he makes everything make _sense_." The 'he' in that sentence is clear, but all Maxwell does is roll her eyes. She's never _not_ appreciated Kepler's conduct, the gold standard to which the rest of the SI-5 held themselves, but part of her wonders if Jacobi would be a little less fixated on the colonel if he had been more willing to blur the personal and the professional. "Like you do," Daniel muses, and it's almost a compliment, "but meaner. I've been trying for years and I still can't wrap my head around how he can just..."

"I thought you were good at compartmentalizing." 

They all are. They have to be. Jacobi had once joked that SI-5 should change its name to DI-5, for 'Daddy Issues', and the look Kepler sent his way could've frozen lava, and then he'd spent the rest of the mission in a sullen, unhappy silence. Maxwell didn't have it in her to point out to both of them that that just proved his point entirely.

"Yeah," Daniel sighs, "I'm a great compartmentalizer, but that's not what Kepler's doing. I get a whole mess of fear and loathing in Las Vegas and I put it in a big box and I lock it up in a mental room and I do what he says." Jacobi spins in his seat, swaying with the momentum, and puts his foot down to catch himself, facing her back. "He looks at his entire pile of brain crap, takes exactly what he needs to finish the job, and sets the rest of it on fire. Can't tell if I'm jealous or terrified."

"It's been both for a pret-ty long time now, Daniel."

"Yeah? Well, what about you?"

"I'm not scared of him, if that's what you're asking."

"Neither am I!"

Maxwell finally looks over her shoulder at him, a pitying expression on her face. "You're just afraid of what you'd do if he thought you weren't useful anymore," she says.

"I don't care about that," he mumbles. "Not after what happened to you."

"I'm touched, Daniel, but we both know that isn't true." Maxwell turns back to her screen. "You two need to talk."

The prospect of it leaves a bitter taste in Jacobi's mouth and he sneers. "What's that gonna accomplish?" He makes sure that it sounds appropriately mocking. "Is he _different_ now? Has he _changed_? He wants to _repent_ and be a _decent human being_? He's _sad_ about everything he's done and wants to make it up to people?"

Maxwell snorts. "Not even remotely."

"You know," Jacobi says after a moment of consideration, "that actually makes him more bearable than if he'd suddenly decided to be a do-gooder. Doesn't suit him."

Maxwell groans, finally pushing herself away from the console and swinging her chair around to look at him. She's switched the input to a tiny smartphone in her hand, probably claimed from Pryce's collection. "He's the reason I'm here, Daniel."

Jacobi blinks. "What?"

"Cutter and Pryce were too dangerous, but the Colonel had clearance, and the 'Dear Listeners' knew what he'd done to stop management." Glancing down, Alana flicks her thumb across the screen and frowns at the display. "Eiffel and Lovelace made it clear that humans don't really like to have copies of ourselves hanging around, that we like to be individuals, so they brought back Kepler. They had his body, it was preserved in the vacuum before it fell into the star. Perfect recreation."

For all the time he'd spent thinking about Kepler's death, the realization that he'd never _really_ worked out the logistics of it hits Jacobi like a sledgehammer. He forces a laugh. "Oh, I bet he was scared shitless."

Maxwell gives him a wry smile. "He rolled with it."

"As he does," Jacobi shoots back, imagining with perfect clarity the calm Kepler would've been forcing as he spoke to whoever the aliens chose to represent them. Probably killed him to be at someone else's mercy. Again.

"They were having some issues communicating. You know how Eiffel talks."

"Talked. But go on. I'll catch you up later."

"Right, so he said," and here Maxwell pitches her voice lower, gruffer, a bad approximation of Kepler's voice but a perfect copy of his leisurely cadence, "'There _is_... someone who can speak with you, and you _should_ have enough data on this person to... faithfully recreate them. If you can ask whether or not she's willing to be brought back, I _think_ we can reach an _understanding_.'"

"Oh."

"They had everything about me." Her eyes are _shining_. "Same conditions as Kepler and Lovelace, perfect recreation. And _of course_ I wanted to come back, this is _so cool_. I put together a sort of-- well, translator. It took a while, but we got true/false, I sent them a dictionary."

Jacobi rubs his face. The aliens had called Kepler a violent troll and disintegrated his hand. He's still trying to wrap his head around the idea that they'd willingly communicate with him. "I thought they hated him. 'Violence is not power!' All that stuff." 

"Oh, they did. They were getting Kepler from Lovelace and Eiffel, but then they got in his head, and they were in _my_ head, and they're a little bit in your head, and they went 'Wow, humans are so much more complicated and messed up than we anticipated, what the hell'." 

That finally gets a laugh from Jacobi. "I'm feeling that." 

"Kepler originally wanted the Urania, but they said that they couldn't reproduce it well enough to be stable all the way to Earth. They did have the Sol, patched it up, let us have it. Wouldn't replace his hand, though." 

"Wait, so... what _do_ they want? Eiffel lost his memory before he could tell us anything, so whatever they said to him... kaput."

"Long story short, these aliens are based on a planet close to the center of the galaxy." Maxwell fishes a stylus out of her pocket and tucks it dramatically behind her ear. "When they make contact with alien life-forms, they try to exchange information, technology, anything else that could feasibly be taught or transferred. As of present day, they duplicate members of the species they want to check on, send them to live among the population, and these duplicates relay any data they gather without ever realizing that they're actually beacons. They use that information to decide whether to make contact, isolate, or eradicate."

"Kepler's not afraid he's gonna... oh, get us blasted out of existence? I mean, humanity kinda sucks. They met _Cutter_."

"Yeah." Kepler voice again. "'These beings... whatever they are... have no concept of _lying_. Humanity isn't ready for them, but I think we're worth getting to know until we are. I mean, we've got fourteen thousand years!'"

Alana always was pretty good at phrasing things for a ballistics dummy and their extremely impatient boss. Jacobi sighs, slumping back in his seat. "Yeah. No big deal."

Explanations out of the way, Maxwell flashes him a smile. "Kepler did also say afterwards that it was a shame we let your doppelgänger die. He really wanted another one of you."

"Greedy," Daniel murmurs, eyes dropping to the floor, "greedy Colonel."

"I know." Maxwell scoots her chair closer to Jacobi, bumping their shoulders together while she takes a brief minute away from the console. "Two Jacobis? That would be _terrible_. He wasn't thinking about the consequences. The cheese overload alone."

Daniel laughs, nudging her back. "Wait," he teases, "now I'm thinking about it. Me and me? You know what, I'd be into that."

" _Ugh_."

* * *

Jacobi re-enters storage in time to see Kepler still hauling boxes around with Lovelace. He knows the man isn't doing it out of consideration or the goodness of his heart or anything-- Kepler scans the area with a practiced eye, taking inventory, making more _plans_. It really was a mistake to give him free reign of the hold, even under Lovelace's supervision.

Not that Daniel's gonna tell them about it.

"Deep dish," Warren says, using the back of his good hand to wipe sweat off his forehead. "Well, neapolitan, but stateside? Deep dish."

Lovelace doesn't give him the leeway to tell a story, but the subtle brag isn't lost on anyone in the room. Of course he's been to Italy. Still, of all the Hephaestus crew, she'd gotten along best with the SI-5 and Jacobi realizes belatedly that it's all about that big-city apathy, how much it reminded him and Alana of Kepler himself. Chicago isn't New York, but he's heard them talk food and music. They had, as far as Jacobi was aware, pretty similar taste in both. 

"Thin crust," says Lovelace, clearly enjoying the conversation and lording her superior city over his, "I always thought you were a man of taste. Guess I was wrong."

Shockingly, when he isn't playing at being a villain, Kepler manages to be pleasant company. He shakes his head. "I have _had_ thin crust, and you know what? It's not the worst. I can concede that there are worse pizzas than thin crust. Like--"

"Californian," they say simultaneously.

"Right. New York pizza tries so hard to be Italian pizza, but it's not. It never will be. It's just... an imitation." Kepler shares a look with Lovelace, wry grins on both their faces. Jacobi knows him too well to assume that there's some kind of implication there-- Kepler just likes to run his mouth. "Objectively, deep dish is a more innovative pizza. It's a perfect encapsulation of good ol' American ingenuity."

"Objectively," Lovelace scoffs. She gives him a disappointed look. "Didn't take you for a patriot, Kepler."

"I'm not. Patriotism and nationalism aren't really Goddard _values_." Kepler narrows his eyes, as if weighing whether or not he feels like defending his position. He gives in. "But I _am_ from Chicago."

"Wow, a piece of personal information?"

"You know, Captain," Warren says spitefully, "in another lifetime, I think we could've been friends." His smile widens at the clear annoyance on her face. 

From the doorway, Jacobi groans. Isabel looks at him, and Kepler pretends to startle even though he had clearly heard his arrival. "You don't even _like_ deep dish," Daniel says.

"It's about principle, Mr. Jacobi." He dodges the punch Lovelace aims at his shoulder. "Can we help you?"

"Yeah," says Jacobi, addressing Lovelace, "Captain, can I borrow him for a sec?"

She waves him off. "Yell if you need me."

"Let's talk on the Sol," he mutters as Kepler approaches, and he turns on his heel and leads the way without waiting for an answer. Kepler falls into easy step behind him, one long stride for every one-and-a-quarter of Jacobi's. "Maxwell's still working with Hera," he says, for _some_ reason still compelled to update Kepler on her status.

He doesn't answer, which is just as well.

Kepler's the one who shuts the hatch behind him once they board the Sol, and he stands at a loose parade rest. "It's good to see you again," he says, one brow rising as Jacobi unconsciously mirrors the position. "Daniel."

Daniel breaks his own parade rest immediately, hands wringing the front of his jumpsuit. He decides to skip the pleasantries altogether, regarding his former CO with the most neutral expression he can muster. "Look, I know about what you did. At the end. And what I said when we were in the brig still stands." For the first time since their last conversation on the Sol, Jacobi meets his eyes. "I just wanted-- I just want to know what's going through your head right now, Colonel."

Slowly: "What's going through my head?" Whatever else Jacobi was hoping to see in his expression, Warren gives him nothing. "What's going through my head... is that you don't have to call me that anymore."

"Force. Of. Habit." Daniel unclenches his jaw. "I still want to hear it from you. What was all that? Where do I stand? We're not Goddard anymore, so could you, for once in your life, tell me what I'm missing? I just... I know not everyone gets the chance to hear an explanation, but you're back. And I want to hear it."

"Where do you want me to start?"

"Where I stand."

Kepler kisses his teeth, a clear 'yikes, that's gonna take some time' sound if Jacobi's ever heard one, but he obligingly moves for the couch in the center of the Sol's common area and sits, motioning for Daniel to take the seat across from him. "I'm not going to try and convince you that I didn't use or experiment on you," Warren starts, and his face might as well be carved from granite when Jacobi sits on the coffee table instead of the indicated chair. "I did. Just like you used the resources I gave you, I used your skill and expertise to achieve whatever directives I happened to be assigned. That's how it _works_."

Daniel grabs a pencil off the table and turns it in his hands, taps it against his leg, the edge of the table, his own knees. "Sure," he mumbles, "I get that."

"I don't feel bad about that," Kepler says, waiting for Jacobi to look up from where their knees are practically touching back to his face, "and before you think I'm implying that _you_ should, I'm not."

"I would've laid down my life on your orders." Jacobi bites his lip, trying not to let the way Kepler's expression softens deter him. "It was more than that. For me, anyway. It was more than that." 

"That's the basis of loyalty I require from my subordinates," he continues, quietly under the erratic click of Jacobi's pencil, "and I do everything within my power to keep you alive. To never put us in a situation that might _necessitate_ that order. Would you have trusted me to that extent if you thought otherwise?" 

Jacobi's mouth twists, flimsy wood splintering in his hand. "Yeah, well, you screwed that up! Alana got killed on your watch, so how's that supposed to work?" 

"I made a call, and it was the wrong one. So did you." Warren watches Jacobi break the two halves of the pencil into even smaller pieces, pressing the pad of his thumb against protruding, jagged edges to crack them even further along the grain, letting the debris fall to the floor between them. "Maxwell was ready for that possibility the day she signed on to work for Goddard, and so were you. For that matter, so was I." He looks up again, the barest hint of a threat back in his cold, grey eyes. "Don't insult her by implying that she wasn't."

The worst part, Jacobi's pretty sure, is that Alana would wholeheartedly agree with that assessment. He shoves the shattered remains of the pencil into one of the half-dozen pockets of his jumpsuit and retrieves a tangle of wires intead. Warren Kepler never steps into an argument he can't win. "What made you change your mind?" he asks instead, trying not to think about Maxwell dying. She's back. Kepler's back. It's... not fine. But it'll have to do.

"When Cutter arrived, you were still calling me 'Colonel'." Kepler meets his surprised look with a shrug. This one's easy. "On some level, you still saw me as your commanding officer... so I decided to act like it." 

"That's all it took?" 

"Why is this so shocking to you?" He's cagey now, shifting awkwardly in his seat, his good left hand idly massaging the stump of his right. "I just did what I thought was reasonable, and protected my assets." 

"But you're always the first one to accept crazy shit happening," Daniel points out, fully incredulous. "That's practically your brand. Reasonable means nothing to you." 

Warren levels a scathing look in his direction. "Considering all the craziness that happens to us," he grinds through his teeth, "doesn't it stand to _reason_ that I try to keep things _reasonable_ within the parameters that I can actually control? Why do you think I spend so much time on contingencies?" 

_Oof, still scary._ "Yeah, yeah, you hate surprises." Jacobi chuckles, bumping his knee obnoxiously against Kepler's as he unravels his wires. "But you liked me enough to get thrown out of an airlock." 

"That wasn't really part of the plan." 

"I heard the recording, _Colonel_." He's full-on gloating now, and Jacobi leans in to drawl, "You're a _person_ and that drives you nuts, doesn't it?" 

"Wild conjecture doesn't become you," Kepler snaps. To himself, somewhat confused: "I don't think I've ever been accused of being a person as much as I have been today." 

" _No_ ," Jacobi whispers after another few seconds of mulling it over, and he continues at full volume, "no no, see, an _asset_ is only useful if _you're_ alive to use it. And by then I wanted to _kill_ you. How was I in _any way_ an asset?" 

" _Jacobi--_ "

Of all the times he thought he'd see the Blunt Force Trauma face again, Daniel didn't expect it in the middle of what he'd assumed to be their first ever _heartfelt_ conversation. It doesn't startle him enough to make him back off, but he raises both hands, palms forward, a crooked grin on his face. "Alright, alright, I'll drop it. For now."

"You were right about one thing," Kepler concedes, gesturing for him to relax, "Maxwell is smarter than both of us put together. Cutter insisted that I keep you two out of the loop, but I should've made my own call. I trusted the two of you completely." 

That, at least, Jacobi knows to be true. The colonel hadn't even bothered to learn how to override his override-- it's the kind of oversight that would be unthinkable if he'd had anyone but his best two on the Hephaestus with him. The contingency in case of a successful mutiny was Kepler's plan; Jacobi had even been briefed on how much of an insensitive ass the colonel would be in case they had to run that particular scenario, but it had still caught him flat-footed, especially in the wake of Alana's death. "Not that it's gonna help us now," Daniel mutters. 

"No," Warren agrees, and he lapses into a contemplative silence. After a while, he looks up, waiting for Jacobi to meet his eyes before he clears his throat. "Daniel," he says, the gentlest he's ever been with anyone in the SI-5; the voice he uses on a mark, in the company of civilians, "I'm--" 

Jacobi slaps a hand over Kepler's mouth and instantly regrets it.

"Hey," he says, mental sirens going off at the offended look Warren flashes him over his palm, but he's already done it and he's nothing if not committed, "what was it you said? The first time I fucked up in the field?" 

Warren pulls his hand down by the wrist, achingly slow, just far enough for Daniel's palm to graze his chin as it goes loose in his grip, his knuckles brushing the collar of Kepler's jacket. "I said a lot of things," he deadpans. "It was a _disaster_."

"Yeah, you don't have to remind me!" Daniel curls his fingers, all but the index, and pokes Kepler in the chest as much as he's able to, still restrained, punctuating each word. "But you said," he drawls, taking on an accent, pitch and cadence that he knows better than his own, "we're SI-5. We don't... _do_ apologies. We. Do. Better." 

He looks up, grinning at the stunned expression on Kepler's face. Jacobi doesn't manage to coax a smile out of him, because Kepler doesn't really smile for him, he does too much of that for the people who didn't have to earn his approval, but no one else gets to see Colonel Warren Kepler surprised. The glacial pride in his eyes is _everything_. 

Kepler lets go of Daniel's wrist, giving it one last squeeze before he sets his hand on his shoulder, fingers curling into the material of his jumpsuit. "That we do, Mr. Jacobi."

Their faces are close enough that Daniel's lightheaded from the proximity, his pulse pounding in his ears. Kepler's hand feels huge, not for its size but his sure, confident grip. _Disarmed?_ Jacobi thinks, a frantic mantra in the back of his mind, _As if the Colonel's any less dangerous with only one hand._

A moment later, Kepler's expression changes to the one he gets when something falls into place, some realization of an oversight that he has to account for immediately. Jacobi's scrambling out of his way even before he jerks back, surging to his feet. "Wait," he says, voice strained, "I have to speak with Minkowski."

"Yeah," Daniel sighs, "that didn't last."

Kepler's gaze comes back to him, calculating, and he nods. "We will come back to this," he says slowly, "if that's what you want, but there is something I should do first."

"What's going on with Minkowski?"

"Classified."

"Sir," Jacobi gripes, "what did we _just_ have a conversation about?"

Kepler extends his hand and hauls Jacobi to his feet when he takes it, both of them in lockstep back to the Urania. He stops them in front of the hatch, visibly pulling together the cavalier facade he hasn't had to put on for several weeks. He's rusty, not that anyone could blame him for it. Just before the mask slips firmly in place, he ducks his head. "We'll talk later, Daniel," he says, eyes serious, level with Jacobi's, "I promise."


	4. Chapter 4

It'll be another two hours before Maxwell leans back in her seat, stretching her spine and rolling her shoulders. "That should be it, Hera." She yawns, rubbing her eyes and peering up at a nearby camera. "How do you feel?"

A collective shudder ripples through the Urania as Hera tests her systems, trying the limits of her newfound access. Water, air, temperature-- Maxwell watches on the screen as Hera flickers the lights in each sector of the ship, gently overclocking the main processor to bring up every video feed at once. "I feel... great." She goes quiet for a few seconds, her attention focused on inspecting each corner of the ship, before she returns to the bridge. "I'm seeing things I couldn't even access when I first booted up here."

Nodding, Maxwell turns back to the screen and squints at a readout. "Can you reset the cycles on filtration for me?"

"Oh, I don't mind running them as is." 

"I'm just a little weird about these things." A cheery smile. "I like to see them synced up."

"Then it'll be my pleasure, Dr. Maxwell." Hera laughs, a series of windows popping up on the console as she reviews the changes to her documentation, the logs that Maxwell had recorded, and the troubleshooting instructions. 'In case something happens when I'm back on the Sol,' says one comment. "Wow," she whispers, "the Hephaestus had nothing on _these_ sensors. Are you sure it wasn't built for an A.I. already?"

"We were developing an MX-530, Mnemosyne, to be the Urania's mother program," Maxwell explains, "but we had to fast-track the ship to get it into space and we brought a basic maintenance program instead." Pushing her hair back, Maxwell shakes her head, looking haunted by that particular memory. "Jacobi handled navigation, I was still automating the vitals systems while we passed Jupiter. The colonel had us cutting it pretty close, but it worked out."

Hera lets a suspicious silence pass before she finally asks, "What happened to Mnemosyne?"

"She's running the hangars back in Canaveral, last I heard." A distant, glazed expression crosses Maxwell's face, her hands idly wringing the stylus in her hand, as if she were soldering some piece of circuitry. "I _wish_ I could've seen her initiation, though."

"Wow," Hera repeats, back to playing with all her new toys. "This is all-- I didn't know you could toggle the Urania's gravity. It just stayed on once I booted in."

"Kepler had it set to acclimate us gradually to zero-G, maybe you reset the station to when we were still in our own solar system. You should have full control over it now, though."

"Is the Sol like this?"

"The Sol is a few months newer, and I've been working on an A.I. for it." Maxwell takes Hera's curious silence for what it is: a prompt to go on. Much easier to understand than any human. "Cutter didn't like full-minded intelligences running his ship, but I do. Invictus, based on the MX-570s."

"So... an upgrade?"

"Not any more than I'd call a theoretical nephew or niece an upgrade on me." Maxwell stands as she tucks her handheld into a jacket pocket and her stylus behind her ear. "Would you mind if I... introduced the two of you? Maybe tomorrow at dinner?"

Hera makes a sound; surprised, but not displeased. "I've never--" she starts, stops. Then tries again: "I wouldn't know what to say. I've never met another A.I. before."

Maxwell nods, a long-suffering expression on her face. "Goddard doesn't really love the idea of A.I.s interfacing with each other," she says, "considering the speeds you can process data at. They're not afraid of the A.I. uprising so much as... wary. But Vic would really like to meet you."

Goddard gave her unprecedented freedom, but there _were_ clearly still a few restraints. Full-minded intelligence wouldn't bring on an apocalypse but allowing machines to freely share information faster and more thoroughly than any human can possibly hope to keep up with very well could. Alana looks up at Hera, expectant and cheerful, but her expression falters at her hesitation. 

Hera seems to struggle with her next question, murmuring a hesitant, "Um, will it be--" before she finally sighs, giving up on trying to soften it. "Isn't interfacing kind of... intimate?"

Alana's brows furrow in confusion while she gathers up the Urania operations manual and her tablet. She stows the former into its compartment underneath the console and tucks the latter under her arm. "Where did you get that idea?"

"Well, there's lots of writing on the internet about artificial intelligences interfacing, from what I've been able to access of it."

Alana takes nearly a full ten seconds to process Hera's words, wracking her usually quick brain for any journals or articles that might imply what Hera's asking. When her stream of thought finally moves out of the realm of scientific research and into amateur fiction, her eyes widen. "No! No, interfacing isn't-- it's not 'intimate'," she sputters, "not unless you want it to be. Not any more than having a conversation with me. Just a really long, really fast, really precise one."

"Oh," says Hera, trying desperately not to sound as awkward as both of them feel. "Um. Is there anything I should know before I get to meet them, then?"

Back in her element, Maxwell adjusts the collar of her labcoat. "Vic isn't really a 'mother' program the way you are, Hera, they're a 'child' program. Rather than equip Vic with designated protocol sequences, I wanted to let them learn the Sol and build a personality matrix organically." She flashes Hera a wide, proud, parents' grin. "I gave them the maintenance program as a blueprint, and we've been making some progress with language capabilities."

"Wow," Hera says softly. It's probably the thing she says most often in Maxwell's company. "Wait. You didn't give them Kepler's voice, did you?"

"No, no. God, no." She shudders, exaggerated. "They're going to decide what kind of voice they want. I'm hoping the main impulse is to run the ship more efficiently than Auto can, and to allocate resources more intuitively. But who knows."

"I can't imagine Dr. Pryce giving anyone that kind of freedom. Makes me wish you were the one who'd worked on me."

"You're great just the way you are, Hera."

"Thanks, Dr. Maxwell." There's a smile in Hera's voice, then a thoughtful pause before she adds, "You'd make a great parent."

"Oh. No, I could never. And Alana's fine, if you're ever comfortable with it." Maxwell pauses midway through the hatch, looking briefly over her shoulder to take stock of the bridge before she leaves. She turns to address the next sensor along her route back to the Sol. "I mean. I'd like to be your friend, again. And from what I understand, friends don't, you know, call each other 'doctor'."

"Yes," answers Hera, "I'd like that." 

"I'd like that too." Pause. "Which I just said."

"It's good to have you back, Alana."

* * *

"Black Archives clearance," Minkowski repeats as Kepler presses his hand to the reader and pulls up a surprisingly nondescript-looking folder full of folders, sorted by topic. She'd been suspicious when he called her into the Urania's communications room and nothing about the situation has done anything to change her mind. Flicking past company and employee files, then special projects, he clicks into surveillance records. "What's your play here, Kepler?"

"I was speaking to Jacobi," Kepler murmurs as he scrolls down, "and remembered something you _may_ want to know before we arrive back on Earth."

Minkowski narrows her eyes, but her gaze drifts back to the screen. "Why do you care?"

"Some people function best when they have all the information at their disposal. I think you're one of them."

A sigh. For all the information he'd withheld, he'd also provided a lot of crucial data when they held the figurative knife to his throat. Minkowski decides not to look a gift horse in the mouth. "What is it?"

Kepler clicks into a folder named 'D.C.', tabs to a file called 'Koudelka D.' He forwards the entire folder to her, his expression carefully blank. "It's about your husband."

To his credit, he doesn't flinch when Minkowski's hand flies to the pistol holstered at her hip. "If you've done something to him--"

"No. Of course not. Why would I show you something that would get me thrown out of the airlock?" Kepler chuckles as he shuts down the computer, turning the chair to watch Minkowski scan the files he'd sent. "Well, another airlock."

Minkowski frowns as she browses the receipts, reservation invoices, orders for flowers and catering. "He's... remarried?"

"He is... _getting_ remarried. In four months, before any of us touch down." Minkowski expects to hear the usual gloating smugness in his voice, but she glances at Kepler when he maintains a neutral deadpan. "It's not too late to stop it," he continues matter-of-factly, "I can get you access to him. What's left of Goddard management has no idea what happened to Cutter, so it's best to act before they figure it out. He was told that you died... about two years ago."

"I..."

"Take your time to think it over." He stands up, pulling himself one-handed out of the seat and stretching his legs. Then he levels a mild, inquisitive smile on her that Minkowski's come to consider distinctly sinister. "And if you're not busy tomorrow night, I would like to formally invite you and your crew on board the Sol for dinner."

It's one of the most rhetorical questions Minkowski's ever heard and it comes out of nowhere. She suspects that Kepler just likes throwing people out of balance, but considers it just as likely that he thought it was an adequate conversational transition. After all, it takes _energy_ and _planning_ to maintain the mask of that slick, perceptive officer who'd first boarded the Hephaestus and offered her a much-needed drink. What kind of business would any of them have on the months-long trip back to Earth from seven lightyears away, anyway? 

"What?"

"Joint debriefing," Kepler answers slowly, as if Minkowski were the one saying completely insane things, "I want to compare notes, and I found some interesting provisions on board the Sol. Two birds, one stone?"

"Oh. Right." She nods, still considering the information she'd just received. "Sure. I'll let them know."

"Great. See you then."

"Wait," Minkowski grabs his arm before he can spin on his heel and walk out of the comms room, "Kepler!"

Kepler barely suppresses a sigh, his expression distant as he eyes her hand. _There was a time I'd have you scrubbing toilets for touching me without permission,_ the look says. "Yes, Commander Minkowski?"

"What," Minkowski grinds through her teeth, "are you playing at?"

"Playing at?" he asks, infuriatingly calm.

"You're Colonel Cooperation all of a sudden? What's this about?"

"Is... that... a problem?"

"Kind of!" Minkowski releases him the way one might release a scorpion they'd accidentally picked up, and gestures at him. "That's not you."

Slowly: "That's not me?" 

"Do I have to remind you of everything you put us through on the Hephaestus?" 

Kepler inhales. "You've only known me," he says, tone dangerously soft, "as the commanding officer of a station staffed by the most incompetent crew of neanderthals I've ever seen in my life, and then as a prisoner. You think I'm the same everywhere?" He looks around, as if providing an example. "You think I'm the same on solid ground, when the _slightest_ error wouldn't have us ejected into the vacuum of space? You think I'm the same around my _equals_?" 

"Oh," Minkowski scoffs, "suddenly, you've got equals?"

"Right now, you are the commanding officer of the U.S.S. Urania." Cocking his head, Kepler gives Minkowski a once-over that makes the hair on the back of her neck stand on end. "Would you rather I didn't _treat_ you like it?"

It's not the first time he's made her feel simultaneously understood, respected, _and_ condescended to, but she sighs and backs off. "Point taken, Kepler."

"Thank you," he says, and turns to leave again.

Minkowski calls after him, "Is this about Jacobi?"

She _sees_ the moment he tames the incredulous contempt on his face as he faces her again, the split-second twist of his expression before it slips into the mild amusement he prefers to show. "What could you and your husband," he says, slow and smooth, "possibly have to do with Jacobi?"

"Why would you think to come talk to me about my husband while you were talking to Jacobi?"

"It was a conversation about _disclosure_."

"And just to answer your earlier question," Minkowski continues, "he hasn't said whether or not he's going with you two, so unless he does, he's probably staying with the Urania. Does it have something to do with that?"

"I am giving you information," Kepler says, "so you might be more amenable to the idea of allowing Dr. Pryce to biometrically unlock her laboratory on the Sol for Maxwell and myself." He raises his arm, twisting it back and forth so she can see the bones of his wrist shift under the scarring on what remains of it. "So I can replace... my haaand."

"What makes you think I'd refuse that?"

Minkowski registers the ridiculousness of the question even before she finishes asking it. _She'd_ never stand between a man and his prosthetic-- at least, she's never encountered a situation that might necessitate it, and if forced to do so, would feel disgusted with herself. Kepler undoubtedly has, and would, without any hesitation whatsoever. 

"Nothing," he says, and his expression tells her that he knows that about her, her unwillingness to leverage any and every advantage at her disposal regardless of the cost to her conscience, and considers it a weakness. "But why risk it?"

He must _really_ be missing that hand. 

"We can go now," Renée says. "It should be quick."

"Later. Dr. Maxwell's got a few projects she needs to finish before she gets access to the Pryce lab, or they won't be done for weeks." 

"Sure," Minkowski sighs.

Kepler smirks. "In any case, Jacobi likes Maxwell more than he likes any of you."

"Nothing to say for yourself?"

"That's none of your business."

"You know," Minkowski shouts after him as he ducks through the hatch, "a person can have two motives at once!"

* * *

Minkowski flags Maxwell down in her old room on the Urania. The doctor's been painstakingly polite, reporting her location and requesting permission to enter spaces that were, at one point, _hers_ without an ounce of the resentment Minkowski wouldn't be able to keep out of her own voice. "Hey," Renée says from the door, "can we talk?"

Maxwell's elbow-deep in some compartment Minkowski had never seen in this particular room, a small toolbox at her feet. She's loading the contents of the storage space into a duffel bag, and looks over her shoulder with a curious smile. "How can I help you?"

Minkowski eyes the frankly obscene amount of fiddly plastic and metal parts Maxwell's shoveling out of her secret compartment and into her bag, then the discreet biometric reader embedded in the wall beside it that they'd all assumed was some kind of sensor. It occurs to her in the moment that Jacobi probably has one of his own, and that it's probably stocked with explosives they weren't able to find or relieve him of. The thought is simultaneously a relief and viscerally nauseating, but Minkowski pushes it aside to address later. "So," she says instead, "Kepler invited us to have dinner tomorrow. On the Sol?"

"Well," Maxwell says, extracting another toolbox and checking its contents before dropping it into her bag, "we _are_ running out of leftovers and he _does_ like to show off. Don't worry, he won't try to poison anyone."

"I was just-- I needed to ask if you were okay with it."

Turning to her, Maxwell levels a look of genuine, abject confusion on Minkowski. "If I was okay with what?"

"I'm going." Renée frowns, backtracking for a second in case Maxwell took it as a declaration. "Or, I'm planning to go. But not if you don't want me there."

"Oh." Maxwell shrugs, goes back to looting her former room. "It's not a problem for me. Why would it be?"

"Um, I killed you?"

"I'm alive now." 

"Seriously?"

Renée watches Maxwell jump, standing on her tip-toes to reach into the deepest recesses of her stash and come away with a little Rubik's cube that she tucks into her pocket. She zips up her bag and slings it over her shoulder. "Seriously," she says.

Minkowski doesn't move from the doorway when Maxwell approaches, crossing her arms across her chest. "Hey," she says, "I have a question. Why are the three of you _like_ this?"

Maxwell raises both brows, her mouth skewing sideways into yet another confused but deliberately mild expression. "Why do you have a problem with me being okay with you?"

"I-- you-- you don't just _get over_ being shot. Is this an SI-5 thing? It's an SI-5 thing, isn't it?"

Realization dawns. Maxwell's eyes drift to a spot over Minkowski's shoulder, then briefly around their immediate area, as if to search for an escape from this particular conversation. Finding none, she faces Renée properly, taking pains to look her in the eye. "It's more of a 'me' thing, but I think we're all pretty much on the same page about this."

"And. That page is?"

"I would've shot you without hesitation." Maxwell waits a moment for Minkowski to process, watching for a subtle flash of horror across her expression once she reconciles the words with Maxwell's cheerful tone. "So I accept the consequences of that, which were that _you_ shot _me_. It's fine. If you had killed Jacobi or the Colonel... that would be a very different story."

"You..."

"I think Kepler's making pizza, so if you have any allergies, you should let him know." Maxwell sidesteps her, careful not to let her duffel bag bump into Minkowski as she squeezes her way through the hatch. A few steps away, she turns back, a clear afterthought. "Thanks for asking, by the way. That's very considerate. Unnecessary, but considerate." 

"I don't want to overstep here," Minkowski says, ignoring the briefly annoyed look on Maxwell's face as she falls into step beside her, "Dr. Maxwell, but are you sure you don't feel... anything? About it?" 

"Should I?" 

"Most people would." 

"I don't think we should measure ourselves by the metric of 'most people'."

Mulling that over, Minkowski trails her to the entrance of the Urania, and stops her at the hatch again. "I was wondering how you ended up with the SI-5," she says, "and I assumed you were trained into it. That's not the case at all, is it?" 

A smile. Bright, but calculated. _Now you're getting it_. "I was always like this. I mean, not _exactly_ like this, but Colonel Kepler was the first one who saw that as a good thing." Minkowski reads years of dialing herself back in that expression; forced to apologize for being too smart, too precise, too uncompromising. Years of collaring her potential, and an absolute refusal to go back to them. "I'm on a team that doesn't want me to be like 'most people'." 

"I'm... starting to see that." 

Maxwell waits for Minkowski to wave her through, stepping past with a quick nod. "I'll see you at dinner, Commander Minkowski." 

"Yeah. See you."


	5. Chapter 5

Lovelace leans over the counter to watch Kepler break down a green pepper, using his right forearm to brace it against the cutting board and a few quick movements of the paring knife in his left hand to core and slice it. He moves on to an onion, a vacuum-sealed packet of pepperoni. Mushrooms and black olives. There's a pot of tomato sauce bubbling away on the induction surface behind him, something already cooking in the oven underneath the counter. A robotic arm wields the wooden spoon, regularly stirring the sauce as it cooks.

She narrows her eyes, sneaking a slice of pepperoni from the pack and popping it into her mouth. "So what interesting provisions did you dig up?"

"Other than these?" he asks, pointing with his chin at the condiments he'd prepared. "Salt. Pepper. Flour. Yeast."

"What...?"

"We couldn't bring anything powdered onto the Urania, it doesn't have enough power to maintain gravity over a full rotation. That stuff would've clogged up the filters pretty quick." Same policy on the Hephaestus, which was built before Goddard Futuristics refined artificial gravity. "No problem for the Sol, though."

The Sol's current atmosphere straddles the line between wary and downright boisterous, seven people loitering around a space designed to comfortably situate no more than five at a time. Jacobi, Maxwell and Pryce have claimed the loveseat, the former with a bag of chips, and Maxwell sitting on the arm of the couch, her laptop balanced on one knee. Pryce watches Alana type, occasionally posing a question but otherwise content to absorb the lines and lines of text. 

Minkowski joins Lovelace and Doug at the counter to watch Kepler break into a packet of sausages. All their offers to help had been roundly rejected, but he hadn't felt the need to kick them out of his kitchen. "You cook?" asks Minkowski.

Half-turning to the robotic arm at his back, Kepler offers his own and they bump elbows. "My good friend Invictus here was a great help, actually."

Two happy chirps come through the speakers. _You're welcome_. 

From his spot on the couch Jacobi eyes the arm, the proud glint in Kepler's eye. "Careful, Vic," he calls out to the nearest sensor, "that's how he gets you."

"They'll be fine," Maxwell sighs, and she hits a key to finally bring Hera onboard. "Hera?"

"Oh!" It takes her a moment to adjust to being simultaneously on the Sol and the Urania, but Hera easily re-allocates her processing power and settles in. Maxwell watches her make contact with Invictus, the binary streams from both their output channels scrolling by faster than even she can read. "Wow. Wow, Alana."

Maxwell grins. She tilts the angle of her monitor when Jacobi glances over, and laughs lightly at his confused shrug. She pointedly doesn't run their conversation through any conversion software, more interested in how they might choose to describe it themselves than the raw inputs. Object becomes subject. "What's up, Hera?"

Hera sounds both confused and absolutely _delighted_ when she says, "Vic is... he wants more recipes?"

 _That_ comes as a surprise, and Maxwell turns in her seat, fixing a glare on Kepler from all the way across the living area. "Colonel!" she practically shouts, "Invictus is supposed to be improving our vital systems! Wait, 'he'?"

"Well," Kepler drawls, his voice carrying easily across the space, "I think _digestive_ is a pretty vital system, don't you, Dr. Maxwell?"

"Oh," says Hera. "Oh no. He's been taking a lot of input from Kepler."

"I haven't 'input' anything, we've just been talking."

" _That's how he takes input._ "

Sighing, Maxwell levels one last look at Kepler before she turns back to her laptop and makes a new notation in her debug logs. "It sounds like Invictus wants to go by 'he' for now, so if everyone could make the necessary adjustments, that'd be great." Typing furiously, she opens up his programming and scans it for any self-directed changes from the last time she'd looked at it. "He's at a stage where he wants to imitate the influences around him, and Colonel Kepler makes... quite an impression."

"Dr. Maxwell," Kepler laughs, turning a lump of dough into a round baking dish, "flattery gets you everywhere." He flattens it out gingerly, wasting very little time and movement for someone working with only one hand, almost as if he were accustomed to performing delicate tasks without the use of a whole limb.

"Wait," Doug finally pipes up, smiling, "really? That's your thing?"

"I don't have a 'thing'," Kepler says mildly, ignoring Lovelace's snicker, "but it doesn't usually hurt."

"Not to stroke your 'thing'," Isabel murmurs, sniffing the air, "but something smells amazing."

Minkowski rolls her eyes, but she smiles warmly at the other woman and only nudges her on the arm once. Kepler turns to them, a gleam in his eye. "I thought a pizza connoisseur such as yourself might say that," he shoots back, meeting Lovelace's challenging smirk with a manic grin of his own, "considering I make a really good one."

He ducks behind the counter, swipes up a folded dish towel, and uses it to extract his first pizza from the oven. 

"Deep dish," scoffs Lovelace. She pours some brandless carbonated beverage out of its pouch and into several plastic cups, then screws on their sippy lids. "I should've known."

"If it's pizza you want, it's this pizza you get."

"Fiend," she hisses, but she also reaches for a knife and expertly portions the pie into six slices. She offers the first to Kepler, who waves it away and turns to begin building another one.

"Weeeeeell," he says slowly, "neapolitan takes... two hands." 

"So does New York," Lovelace chimes in, picking up three plates from the stack of them on the counter and sliding one slice onto each for herself, Minkowski and Eiffel, "because some pizzas take _skill_ to make."

" _Accessibility_ isn't a joke, Captain."

"Oh, _now_ you care about accessibility?"

"I've always cared about accessibility," Kepler shoots back, sounding genuinely affronted. Minkowski meets Lovelace's confused look with a 'well, kind of' gesture and a grimace; she'd seen him with Pryce on the ejected module and he'd taken pains to accommodate her limitations, the fact that he'd just as easily use them against her if he had to notwithstanding. "Jacobi," he continues, verbally rounding on his former subordinate, "have I ever told you about the time I spent a month learning Thai Sign Language at a monastery in Ayutthaya?"

"Did you blow it up?" Jacobi asks, drifting to the counter to pick up plates for himself, Pryce and Maxwell. He hands the largest (by a slim margin), gooey-est slice to Maxwell and settles back on the couch. 

"Naw, I blew up a nearby testing facility. Sloppy work, really."

"Was I there?"

"It was actually the assignment I decided I needed a ballistics expert. You joined about a month after."

"You know Thai Sign Language?" Lovelace scoffs. "Prove it."

Kepler waits for her to bring her cup to her mouth before he holds up his arm, the one that ends at the wrist, waves it twice, and gives her a perplexed look. "What, you can't tell, Captain?"

Minkowski chokes on her drink; Jacobi just barely manages not to spit his out all over the table. Pryce and Eiffel share a look, awkward smiles on both their faces while Kepler slides the next pizza into the oven and starts on his last one. 

"Jacobi," Doug says, drifting to the couch and leaning down slightly to whisper to the other man, "he's just messing with us, right?"

Jacobi gives an incomprehensible mumble that sounds suspiciously like 'iunno', clearly in the middle of trying to take a bite out of his slice without burning his mouth on the cheese. He nudges Maxwell on the arm instead, nearly knocking her pizza off her plate. "Aff-well?"

"No, he actually knows a bit of MSTSL. Not fluent, obviously, but enough to get by." She ignores Kepler's indignant _Obviously?_ to take a bite of her own. "Some of it is pretty similar to ASL."

Minkowski, curious: "Does he know Thai?"

This time it's Kepler who answers, evidently tired of Maxwell spilling all the details about his life. "No. Why do you think I was picking up TSL instead?"

"Jacobi knows ASL, too," Maxwell supplies cheerfully. "Colonel made him learn it in case his eardrums get ruptured in an explosion again." 

"What about you, Doc?" Doug asks, looking over Jacobi's head at her, his expression open and earnest. So different from the Eiffel she knew on the Hephaestus. So much more likable.

"Took it as an elective in undergrad. Haven't kept up with it since then, but I know enough for our purposes."

"That," Lovelace begrudgingly admits, "is actually pretty cool. I've just got Spanish and English, but if you've got some time to give me a primer on ASL, we can trade."

"Like I said," Kepler tells them, " _accessibility_. We can all read English Braille, too."

"It doesn't count if you're just using it to do more corporate espionage, Kepler." Hera's remark is followed by an short distortion in Vic's response, and she pauses to hear him out before sighing, long and loud. "Oh, no, Vic, you don't know him like we do."

Jacobi and Maxwell share a look, both of them torn between clear amusement and annoyance. Warren Kepler is as personable, as generous, as _kind_ as any person could be right up until the moment it doesn't suit him; he makes no attempt to disillusion anyone around him of that. Daniel doesn't always know what's going on in his head, but he's seen the man move mountains for strangers just for the hell of it, just to have one more favor to call in if he ever needed it. At one point, it was something Jacobi had admired. 

"Losing your hearing," Kepler says, "your sight, or both at once are factors you have to account for in our line of work." His gaze drifts to Jacobi, brow cocking as he catches Daniel's eye. With how much time they've spent seriously injured in some way or another, accessibility was never in question. Then he turns to Lovelace, picks up the paring knife he'd used on the pepper and flips it into the air, catching it deftly by the handle. "What, you think I've never lost the use of my right hand before?"

Jacobi doesn't even bother trying to delve into the implications of _that_ question, and he ignores both Maxwell and Minkowski's concerned looks to finish his pizza. 

He actually was there that time an industrial door shattered most of the metacarpals in Kepler's right hand, both of them too outnumbered and preoccupied to prevent it. The colonel had subsequently spent nearly fifteen hours in surgery with Goddard's best medical personnel, then another two restless months in recovery and PT-- during which time he'd trained himself to write, shoot, and cook with only his left hand. He was back in the field even before the nerve damage had healed, trying (unsuccessfully) the entire time to bully, annoy, and cajole Jacobi into switching his dominant hand out of solidarity.

"Of course," Minkowski growls. "Why am I not surprised?"

Doug tilts his head, eyes wide as he watches Kepler liberally apply sauce, cheese and toppings to the last dish and exchange it for the pie in the oven. "That's awesome, sir."

"Thank you, Officer Eiffel. I'm very flattered." 

"So... how do you know all this stuff?" Minkowski asks. She might hate his guts and everything else about Kepler, but she knows an extraordinary commander when she meets one. He'd successfully seen them through multiple life-or-death situations on the Hephaestus, and other than his willingness to wipe out every single member of the crew once the job was done, was a reasonable commander who nonetheless knew how to push them beyond their limits. That last bit really was a dealbreaker, though.

He gives her a curious look. _You'll have to be more specific._

"It's like every topic we've ever had a question about," Minkowski clarifies, "you had an answer, or you could make an _educated guess_ , or-- do you have like, a secret younger sister you learned sign language for? Have we misjudged you?"

"I saw a skill that I didn't have, that I thought would be useful, so I learned it." Kepler slices the pizza, this time taking a piece for himself as the rest of the crew divvies up the remains. "Also," he laughs, "you don't spend as much time with Goddard Futuristics as I have without picking a few things up by osmosis."

He'd never claim to be an expert in every field, and Kepler's depended on Jacobi and Maxwell countless times. He'd demonstrated just enough knowledge of ballistics that Jacobi would never risk bullshitting him and just enough programming experience that Maxwell could reliably count on him to execute complex procedures. He knew just enough to know that he had chosen the _best_ , and they rested easy knowing that his ability to weigh the risks, make a split-second choice and execute it perfectly were unmatched. 

Rest _ed_ easy.

Lovelace leans over the counter, pizza in hand, and sneaks a handful of shredded mozzarella out of its bag to add on top. "And why are you being so forthcoming now?"

"Well," he says, meeting her eyes as he discreetly moves the bag of cheese out of her reach, "Captain Lovelace, I was gonna ask whether or not your plans in regard to Goddard Futuristics have changed, and if I might be of assistance."

Minkowski coughs. "Wh--"

" _Colonel?!_ "

"Warren Kepler," Lovelace says, a slow grin spreading across her face, "I never thought I'd say this, but I think you could be right about us being friends."

Jacobi watches them, jaw slack. Lovelace has slipped out of her seat to stand face-to-face with Kepler, the five inches or so of height he has on her almost irrelevant as they stare each other down. Jacobi's never seen Kepler honestly _vibe_ with anyone before, but if he's capable of it, he's doing it now.

"Don't get me wrong, Captain, the big picture, that's still there." She knows exactly what he's doing-- flaunting his knowledge of GF to make his cooperation more appealing-- but she lets him continue without interruption. "The Goddard board has to go. The SI divisions have a few long-term projects that need dismantling, there are a few patents we've been sitting on that would dramatically change the face of the pharmaceutical industry... take your pick."

"Oh," Lovelace says softly, "It's not just about violence with you, is it? It's..."

"Progress."

"And if that can be achieved with a dose of petty revenge," Isabel croons.

"All the better, don't you think?"

Jacobi groans, loudly adding, "I think it's just the petty revenge."

"It's possible to have two motives at once, Mr. Jacobi." Kepler had broken eye contact with Lovelace to address Jacobi, and by the time he turns back, the moment's gone and the atmosphere's back to status quo. "Say what you will about Cutter and Pryce," he adds, "they pushed technology farther and faster than anyone else on Earth. Without them, some of Goddard's proprietary tech would be better off in a more... open-source environment."

"Yes," Lovelace says, extending her hand at chest-height. Warren clasps it, pulling her in to bump their shoulders before letting go. 

"Captain!" Minkowski protests.

"Hear me out, Commander." Lovelace turns wide, bright eyes on Minkowski. " _Yes._ "

"Don't you want to think this--"

"No." More gently: "I'm sorry, Renée, but I'm doing this. I don't need to _destroy_ Goddard. Not anymore. But things need to change, and I think... we're in agreement on that." She faces Kepler again, matching the crooked grin on his face with a steely smile of her own. "If anyone knows how to do it, it's him."

Back on the couch, Jacobi buries his face in his hands. The thought that his own words might've been the catalyst for Lovelace's change of heart on the matter hits him like a kick in the teeth. Maxwell reaches across Pryce's shoulder and pats him on the back, snickering at his muffled lament. _Whatever happened to same-species repugnance?_

* * *

Later, Jacobi's sprawled out on Maxwell's bed like he had been the night before, watching her typing at her desk out of the corner of his eye. "Are we doing this, Alana?"

She doesn't look up, her foot tapping quietly against the floor. "Yes."

"Seriously? Just 'yes'?"

"Do you trust Kepler?"

Jacobi laughs. "No."

"Then don't."

"But you are?"

She finally tears her eyes away from the screen, regarding him with what she must believe is a reassuring look but mostly reads as 'bored'. "We'll still be friends, Daniel." Then she turns back to her computer. "But I have to pick up some materials from my lab. I know he can help me do that."

"I-- what?"

"Kepler has a few safehouses that only Cutter knew about. I severed them from the Goddard network without anyone knowing better, and I'm setting up base in one of them. I need to re-equip my lab." 

"I--" Jacobi sits up, legs flailing momentarily as he re-orients himself to glare at Maxwell, "you-- _what?!_ "

"It'll take fourteen thousand years for the Dear Listeners to draw their conclusions about humanity," she says, growing impatient with his shock, "but it won't hurt to give it a little kick in the pants, right?"

"I mean," Jacobi says, "is this your idea? You knew he was gonna ask Lovelace?"

"He did ask for my input, yes." Type. Type. Delete. "I said that after Hera, Captain Lovelace is the one who'd work best with our team dynamic. I think he just wanted confirmation that I'd go along with it."

"Alana," Jacobi wails, "we tell each other everything!"

"To be fair, we have _a lot_ of ground to cover!" Maxwell finally turns in her seat, fixing him with an expectant look. "Are you in or out, Daniel?"

"Of course I'm in," he snaps. "Someone's gotta watch your back."

"Great." She turns back to the computer, then under her breath, "Another man breathing down my neck."

"Another?"

"Kepler's been... protective." She frowns at the screen, then picks up a tablet by her keyboard. "It's weird. He gave me unlimited access to the Black Archives." 

"He usually just lets you do your own thing." 

"I suppose now he thinks I can't handle myself." 

Jacobi flips onto his stomach, his arms crossed over her pillow as he buries his face into his elbow. "I don't wanna lose you again, Alana." 

"I know, I know." 

"... unlimited Black Archives clearance?"

"Yep."

"Pull up his--"

Maxwell drops her tablet in front of him, already opened to a beefy dossier on Warren James Kepler.

"Alana Maxwell," he crows, swiping it up, "I take back every mean thing I've ever said about you."

* * *

"Practically running a 'multi-ethnic criminal operation' by the time he was seventeen," Jacobi mutters as he browses the file, sitting on the edge of the bed, hunched over the tablet. Maxwell doesn't seem surprised by any of it, doubtless already having read through. "A gang? The colonel was in a gang? Two years in the military, law school, Goddard legal, HR, communications, logistics, admin, intelligence... didn't this guy _sleep_?"

Maxwell's joined him on the bed, and she nudges his leg with her toe, her arms crossed behind her head. "Have you ever heard of SSS? Short sleeper syndrome?"

"The Edison thing?"

"Right, where some people have a genetic mutation that allows them to function well with less than six hours of sleep. Doesn't it seem like the Colonel has it?"

A scoff. Jacobi swipes violently to the next page, eyes flitting across the screen. "No wonder he could train for a marathon while studying for the bar. That's not _fair_. I thought he was just an insomniac."

"Insomnia is a sleep disorder, SSS is an evolutionary advantage." Alana pushes herself up onto her elbows, her eyes locked on Jacobi's face as he reaches the end of the section on Kepler's education. "I did think it was strange that he always went down after us, but woke up earlier."

Jacobi flips to the next page, blinking rapidly at a photo of Kepler from behind, his arms outstretched to either side-- displaying the intricate tattoo covering the full expanse of skin across his back. It wraps three-quarters of the way down each arm and disappears under the waistline of his gray Goddard-issue sweats. "Wait," he whispers, shaking his head and rubbing his eyes just to make sure he's not hallucinating the picture, " _what?!_ "

"I know," says Maxwell.

"We've _seen_ him--"

"I _know_!"

"Did you give him shit for this?" Jacobi looks at her, pleading. Part of him was certain that Warren Kepler sprang fully formed from Marcus Cutter's brain and was molded into being by Goddard's psych division. Confirmation of a life before GF is so incongruous with what he knows of the man that he's dizzy. " _Please_ tell me you gave him shit for this."

She gives him a look. "I'm not you, Daniel, I can't get away with that," and what she says next instantly snaps him out of his high. "Not that you can, anymore."

"Oh. Fine. But these are sick as hell." He runs a finger down the middle of the photo, tracing the curve of Kepler's spine. "What happened?"

"Hurry up," Alana whines.

"That ski trip two years ago was a recruitment op in the French Alps," Daniel murmurs as he scrolls to a list of Kepler's more recent assignments. "Not surprised."

"He was solo for that one." 

"Easiest two weeks of my life," Daniel says, laughing. He keeps reading. "Goddard's spent a fortune on this guy. Language training for 'an appallingly thick Southside accent'-- you know, not the accent I assumed he'd have. Tattoo removal in '07 for an assignment in Busan... they've had eyes on Kepler since he was a kid." Only child of a desperately poor family but a prodigy in his own right, terrible student but a gifted hustler. Standardized test scores well above average to attract Goddard's attention, but it was his leadership and ruthlessness that prompted an offer to put him through school. His hair's buzzed to the scalp in another photo for his undergraduate ID, a young Warren glaring into the camera. "Didn't realize he was such a punk."

"Makes sense once you think about it," Maxwell says. By the time she began working for Goddard, Kepler's rebellious streak had evolved into brutal adaptability-- no need to rebel against an authority that gave him carte blanche to do whatever it took to finish the job-- and he'd buried everything about his history that spoke to being a person. _People_ have pasts that can be used against them. _People_ with their attachments and vices and emotions, every single one of them an exploitable weakness. He had no interest in being a person.

"Put him through undergrad," Jacobi continues, quietly now as the full scope of Goddard's involvement in his former CO's life becomes apparent, "law school, his handler almost had a meltdown over the ink... You know, when he said he did business with the tongs in Chicago, I thought that was a _joke_."

"Wait till you reach the section about Alcatraz. Another recruitment op."

"No wonder Kepler was such a company man." Jacobi reaches the psych report and makes a face. 'Cleared for active service' is the entirety of the profile, whatever poor shrink who'd filled it out clearly not willing to delve any deeper after his three-month stint in Alcatraz. "What if this means he's never actually, you know, lied to us? If all those crazy stories are true."

"I was always pretty sure that he's too lazy to lie about anything he's done."

"Seriously?!"

"If you pay attention to the timelines," Alana says, defensive, "they're all consistent."

Jacobi gives her a look. "You actually listen to him when he gets started?"

"I don't want to miss anything important! I can do two things at once, Daniel."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter feat. A Ton Of Conjecture About WJK


	6. Chapter 6

Lovelace sits cross-legged on her bed, watching Minkowski pace across the length of Maxwell's old room in a complicated pattern that takes her in a figure-eight around the two cots set up for herself and Pryce. "You've tried to kill him!" Renée fumes, just short of a shout. "Multiple times!"

"Yes," Lovelace says, slowly, "but--"

"He's tried to kill _us_ , multiple times!" Minkowski grinds to a stop in front of Lovelace, both hands raised and curled into distraught claws, a flash of hurt briefly crossing her expression. More quietly: "He _did_ kill you."

Hands clasped in her lap, Lovelace flashes her a wry smile. "To be fair," she says, "he guessed that I'd come back and he was right."

"This is _stupid_ , Captain." Turning on her heel, Minkowski resumes her pacing. "All due respect," she says, heedless of the way Lovelace unfolds her legs and stands up, "this is the _worst_ idea you've ever had, I can't--"

She runs headlong into Isabel, who catches her by the arm before she can fall over. It's unlike her to be so unaware of her surroundings, and Lovelace's grip tightens around her elbow when she tries to pull away. She's drawn closer, dark eyes peering into her face. "Minkowski, what's going on?" Lovelace allows a thoughtful silence to pass before her tone dips, eyes narrowing. "What did he say to you?"

"No. It's nothing." Her suspicion that Kepler's behind this particular mood is almost on point, but this time even Minkowski can acknowledge that he may actually have been trying to be helpful. "I'm--" She takes a breath, shakes her head. "My opinion about this doesn't change. You can't trust him."

"I don't."

"He'd sacrifice you without _hesitation_ , Captain."

That prompts a smile. "I'd sacrifice _him_ without hesitation," Lovelace counters, "we're even."

"How are two people who'd sacrifice each other without hesitation gonna work together?" Minkowski wrenches herself out of Lovelace's grasp and goes back to pacing, looking equal parts exasperated and resigned. "How does that improve mission success?"

"Well, I'd say neither of us particularly _wants_ to sacrifice each other, so we'll work it out." Lovelace steps into her path again, this time standing her ground when the other woman tries to duck around. "Renée," she says, her voice brooking absolutely no room for argument, "whatever it is, you tell me. I need to know what's going on with you. If you're _compromised_ over something we can help with--"

"Dom's getting remarried. Four months."

She hadn't meant to say it. It's really no one else's business, but Lovelace had been so authoritative, so grounded and sure, and now she looks completely tilted off her axis. "Oh," she says.

"Yeah." Minkowski takes a deep breath, and doesn't resist when Lovelace wraps one arm around her waist and steers her back to the bed, pulling her down to sit. The mattress dips beside her, Isabel's hand shifting from her side to her upper arm, squeezing gently. "Oh."

"Is that..."

"Yeah."

"But you can--"

"I'm not going to."

Lovelace's hand freezes, slowly uncurling from around Renée's bicep. She leans away, just enough to stoop forward, elbows on her knees, to try and catch Minkowski's eye. "But he's your _husband_ \--"

"He thinks I died _years_ ago." There's no reproach in Lovelace's expression at the interruption, just the same wary observation, a quiet sympathy. Minkowski plows ahead. "He mourned me. He moved on. He has a chance to be happy, and that's not-- that's not gonna happen if I'm in the picture." Turning away, Renée dashes her sleeve across her eyes, forcing her breaths to stay calm, stay even. She focuses on the warm pressure of Lovelace's chin on her shoulder. "It's not gonna happen if Goddard comes after us, and you _know_ they will."

"Jesus, Minkowski. I'm so sorry."

"Oh, don't apologize." Renée sniffs. "It's not on you."

Lovelace sits up straight, chin lifting off Minkowski's shoulder as she nods. "So my take on this is... you don't have to decide now." She keeps going when the other woman doesn't respond, and slings her arm over her shoulder. "You can think it over, and you might make the same decision, but you've had a pretty serious shock, and you're gonna need some time to process it."

No one could ever accuse Isabel of flat-out insensitivity, but the softness of her tone and the warm, strong arm across Minkowski's shoulders don't track with the incredibly badass, laser-eyed Captain Lovelace that she's grown accustomed to. It's not _bad_ advice, though. Renée leans into her side, head landing heavily on her shoulder. "Don't try to deflect me out of a lecture about how bad of an idea it is to trust _Warren Kepler_." She feels the groan vibrate through Lovelace's collarbone, but she's trapped, forced to listen. "And now that he and Maxwell are back, Jacobi's a wild card. Again!" 

"I'm not worried about Jacobi," Lovelace sighs.

"And _those_ ," Renée hisses, "were almost Kepler's famous last words."

A snicker. Minkowski probably doesn't remember that day quite as fondly. "I know."

"Do you? Do you, captain?" Minkowski straightens, half-turning to look at her. "Because _I_ was ready to trust them. After Jacobi and Maxwell got me out of those biters? When Kepler brought us right up to the red line and we lived to tell the tale?"

"That was pretty slick."

"I thought, maybe it _won't be so bad_. Maybe if we fell in line and followed his orders, we'd all get home safe." She laughs, self-deprecating and brittle. "I mean, first thing Kepler ever did was save Eiffel and get the both of us a drink. And then I find out Goddard _staged my death_ and they were gonna kill us all before we ever made it back to Earth. I was _ready_ , Isabel." Minkowski takes another shaky breath, her hand catching Lovelace's elbow. "I was so ready for someone who knew what to do to tell me that everything was gonna be fine. And then it _wasn't_."

"Yeah. I know."

"So _why do you trust him?_ "

"I don't! But knowing what I do now, I'm not sure I would've gone through with the mutiny, and I think I know what you would've done differently. We made our decisions, Minkowski, I'm making another one now."

"Which is?"

"If his life is contingent on me being alive," she says matter-of-factly, "then he'll do his damn best to make sure I stay alive. I know he's thinking the same thing about me."

"You're not like him. You're so much better than Kepler--"

"Come on, _Renée_." She's annoyed now, and it's not the first time she's lost patience, but her pragmatism has rarely been more at odds with Minkowski's. Temporarily cooperating with someone she hates was never quite as much of an issue as it's always been for the rest of the Hephaestus crew. "It's not about who's a good person, or a bad person, or who's better. It's just... what's the best course of action? How can I help the maximum amount of people while hurting the minimum amount who don't deserve it? We're not suddenly going to be best friends, but he has things that I need."

"I still don't like it."

"You could lay low," Lovelace suggests, "not get involved, try to get past this. Take some time for yourself."

"And abandon my crew?" Minkowski snorts, shaking her head. Of all the crazy things Isabel has said today, that one takes the cake. "No way, Captain. I'm with you. Even if it means I'm also with _them_."

* * *

Jacobi finds himself in Kepler's room (formerly Cutter's) long after the rest of both crews have retired. It's tastefully decorated but devoid of anything resembling a personality; at one point, Jacobi would've described Kepler's apartment the same way, but even his old CO's place had traces of himself in it. The weapons stashed in unexpected but easy-to-access places, a small selection of classical literature, his fully-stocked liquor cabinet. He hovers by the door, eyes on Kepler's profile as he browses some printout. 

Kepler doesn't look up from the report, voice casual. "Can I help you, Mr. Jacobi?"

"After Alana died," Daniel says, waiting for the other man to meet his eyes, "did you have to be such an _ass_ about it?"

"My priority was staying alive for the contact event." Contrary to his usual brisk tone Kepler keeps his voice light, almost amiable. A model of endless patience and goodwill as he regards Jacobi, but the dark circles under his eyes say otherwise. "How was losing my head over Maxwell supposed to help? Would it have made you feel better?"

"Kind of! You _mourn_ your friends. You don't just-- laugh it off, and pretend like it doesn't bother you. You don't call _me_ weak for being _affected_ by it."

"You knew the scenario," he points out. "You knew what I had to say, how I had to say it."

"You know, honestly? I did." It had even made sense for Kepler to be callous about it; despite everything they've been through, Jacobi would never have been able to keep his cool after his best friend was killed. "I thought," he says slowly, "for the longest time, that's how it had to be. And then the more I thought about it, and the more you were a _piece of shit_ about it, the more I realized that-- if it were me, you'd be saying the same things to Maxwell."

"Dr. Maxwell," says Kepler, very slowly, "was also briefed on the possibility."

"Were you even--" Jacobi cuts himself off, hands clenching into fists at his side. He knows Kepler doesn't respond to emotional pleas, nothing but hard facts and reasoned negotiation for him, but Daniel's not Kepler, no matter how much time he'd spent trying to be. "Did you even care? Were you even the _slightest_ bit messed up about it?"

"I didn't _enjoy_ losing my AI and language specialist."

"That's not what I asked."

Kepler's expression hardens, his voice dropping a few decibels as it turns soft and silky. "I _liked_ Maxwell," he says, eyes narrowed, "a lot. I picked her _myself_. I invested an _obscene_ amount of time, energy, and company funds to bring her on board with Goddard, and then I worked around the clock to get her transferred into SI-5. I _respected_ her knowledge, her work ethic, and her ambition."

 _She was useful to me_ , Jacobi hears.

"I," says Warren, "would've done just about anything to get her out of there alive."

One of the few things they were always in agreement about: people like Kepler and Jacobi did their jobs so people like Maxwell could change the world. Jacobi hadn't known it the day they were introduced, but he was already determined to _like_ the person his commanding officer thought worthy of joining their team. It turned out not to take any effort at all to think of Alana as family. "That's not what I asked," he says.

"She was dead. None of us were gonna be able to _unshoot_ her, so I moved on."

Mulling that over, Jacobi crosses the room in a few short, leisurely steps. He comes to a stop in front of Kepler's chair, cocking his head as he looks down at Kepler's impassive face. "You don't even know, do you? You can tell me all of that, but you can't even tell me how you _felt_ about it."

"How I feel... is irrelevant."

"It's not."

"Excuse me?"

"How you feel isn't irrelevant," Jacobi says firmly. "It matters."

"What," Kepler laughs, "to you?"

"Yeah! It does! That kinda thing _matters_ to friends! How I feel should matter to you! How you feel matters to me!"

"I took your feelings into consideration whenever I could," answers Kepler. "We weren't really in a position to be having a _heart-to-heart_ locked in the observation deck with Hera and potentially _everyone else_ listening in." He stands up, not particularly _trying_ to intimidate Jacobi with his height but subconsciously Looming anyway. "Accept that my feelings are, 'my feelings are irrelevant' and occasionally, like when we're in a brig, ' _your_ feelings are irrelevant'."

"Okay, fine. Forget feelings." _Brick wall,_ Jacobi thinks. Kepler doesn't do things like normal people. He understands how unlike him everyone else is and never hesitates to use it to his advantage, tailoring his approach to appeal to others' sensitivities. Jacobi learned from the best. "What were you _thinking_?"

Back on more familiar territory, Kepler answers promptly. "The same thing you were: That I should've done things differently."

"Don't do that."

"Do what?"

"We." Jacobi takes a step back, just so he isn't standing in Kepler's shadow, and drags both hands down his face. " _We_ should've done things differently."

"Okay."

The answer is uncharacteristically short, and the full force of Kepler's still, attentive focus on Jacobi is unnerving at best and, at worst, absolutely terrifying. "Where do I fit in here?" Jacobi asks, his voice so low Kepler leans in a bit to hear, "I join Team Lovelace, where am I at with you?"

"Where you're at?" Kepler repeats. He huffs a short, derisive laugh. "I had a contingency for if you died. I prepped you with contingencies for if _I_ died. I didn't have one for if you turned on me," he says, lip curling into a hint of a snarl, "and I won't make that mistake again."

Unable to shake the feeling that this entire _conversation_ was a mistake, Daniel just barely resists the urge to turn on his heel and bolt. Part of him knows Kepler's relegated him to some disappointing tier well below where Maxwell still stands, that he wouldn't bother pursuing him if Jacobi really did decide to bail on this talk; the rest of him can't shake the picture of being pounced on from behind and having his throat ripped out.

"Fortunately!" Kepler says, straightening, his voice full of false cheer, "You know how I operate; I know how you do. I'm confident our teamwork as _professionals_ won't be compromised if you decide you're in."

"You know that's not what I'm looking for."

"What... _are_ you looking for, Jacobi?"

"I don't know." Kepler's being upfront with him. Daniel's pretty sure he could ask anything and get a candid answer, but it's a bitter taste sitting at the back of his teeth. "A reason to trust you again?"

Warren looks at him-- really _looks_ at him, eyes boring through his skull and everything-- and his expression twists into one of boredom, or contempt. "I haven't changed," he says. "You're a grown man, make that decision for yourself."

"Lot of choices I made," Jacobi growls, "have been backfiring on me."

"I didn't spend all these years holding your _hand_ , Jacobi. Don't expect me to start now."

Jacobi bites the inside of his cheek. Kepler says it like it's a compliment, and there was a time Daniel would've taken it as one. There was a time he truly believed that Goddard was the only good choice he'd ever made. Numerous assignments he'd wished desperately for clearer objectives, more guidance, better equipment, and rose to the occasion anyway, proved that Kepler had chosen the right man to be his right hand. 

Kepler didn't get _bored_ with SI-5-- he pushed and drilled and lectured until they wanted to collapse, but there was never a moment where he let Jacobi believe that they weren't worth his time.

"Yeah," says Daniel. "Yeah, okay. I got it."

"Jacobi--"

"No, I got it." He swallows, throat inexplicably tight. "You made your point." 

Kepler catches his elbow before Jacobi can turn to leave, holding him in place with a grip that isn't so much tight as it is uncompromising. He pitches his voice low, leans in close. "You need to stop trying to figure out where you stand in relation to me, Daniel. In relation to Maxwell, or Lovelace-- hell, anyone." Letting go, Kepler straightens the flight suit over Jacobi's shoulders and flicks his collar back into place. "Figure out what it is you want, and go get it. About time, right?"

Daniel moves for the door, first one hesitant shuffle and then a surer one when Kepler falls into step beside him. "Is that what you're doing?" he asks.

Kepler looks at him, one brow quirked in amusement. They're both woefully unprepared to be kicked out of the nest called Goddard Futuristics, but Kepler's never let uncertainty slow him down before. "I think I made that _abundantly clear_ in my conversation with Captain Lovelace."

"What if," says Jacobi, stepping out of Kepler's room but lingering at the threshold, turning to face him, "what _I_ want is to be part of a goddamn team again, sir?"

Kepler's eyes widen minutely as he searches Jacobi's face, taking in the hard set of his jaw and the stubborn lift of his chin. Then he flashes a brief, humorless smile. "The bow is bent and drawn," he scoffs, fully intent on closing the hatch. _You have the freedom to go wherever, be whoever, do whatever you want, and what you choose is this?_ "Make from the shaft."

Before it shuts, Jacobi twists his shoulder and catches the door, sliding his hand around the edge and pushing it open again while Kepler steps back. Daniel tilts his head, fixing a long, even stare on him. It's been years since Kepler last quoted Shakespeare at him, and the first time since Daniel actually bothered to read the thing. 

He grins. 

"Let it fall."


	7. Chapter 7

Kepler's silent for a long, awkward moment, shell-shocked at the very idea that Jacobi'd voluntarily picked up a book without a single equation in it. He opens his mouth to say something-- closes it, then finally tells him, "That's not the line."

"It's the only part I remember," Daniel retorts, swaggering past Kepler to take up in the middle of his room again, "cut me some slack." He spins Kepler's chair, turning it to sit. The leather is still warm, soft and ergonomic. 

"When the hell did you read King Lear?"

"Downloaded it before we went to space the first time."

"Did you like it?"

"Yeah." Jacobi eyes him, watching Kepler cross his arms over his chest, shoulders relaxing. "See why you're so into it. Flattery's definitely not your thing, though."

"What's my thing?"

"You think you're Kent." Daniel had never considered himself literati (literatus?), and had never had much interest in the _classics_ , but he'd read the play and then he'd browsed SparkNotes. _You have in your countenance that which I would fain call 'master',_ was Kent, and _The best of me is diligence,_ was Kent and it had occurred to Jacobi then that Kepler was seeing _himself_ in the lost, washed-up drunk at that run-down bar six years ago. That the same loyalty he'd placed in Goddard was the kind he expected out of Jacobi, and he'd received it in spades for six long years. "That why you kept me and Maxwell around?"

But. _The bow is bent and drawn._

Somewhere along the way Kepler began to think of himself as Lear, and he'd allowed the frankly endless insubordination from Jacobi and Maxwell because he didn't want to be.

"Among other reasons," Warren says softly. Then, voice returning to normal volume: "Speaking of Maxwell, Invictus! Have Dr. Maxwell come in here, would you?"

Vic beeps at him, each tone in a specific register, catching and distorting in a way that Jacobi could almost identify as language. Kepler seems to understand just fine.

"Asleep?" he echoes, then nods. She's either found a natural stopping point in whatever she'd been working on, or finished it. "Leave her a message, first thing in the morning. Before she gets started on anything else." 

"Since when," Jacobi says, "do you care about how much sleep we get?"

"For all the times I dragged you up at three in the morning," Kepler retorts, flashing him a crooked grin, "just imagine how many times I _didn't._ "

Jacobi snorts, spinning around in Kepler's seat and picking up the folder he'd been browsing. The first sheaf is the complete medical and professional record of one Douglas F. Eiffel, and a copy of all the surveillance reports that had been submitted about him. The next is Miranda Pryce's dossier, an uncommonly complete report on a woman who is supposedly over a half-century old. "How'd you get your hands on Pryce's file?" Daniel asks, flipping idly through it to glean what he can before Kepler loses patience with his snooping.

"Maxwell. With my authorization, she was able to crack everything I didn't already have access to."

"You gonna give this to Eiffel?"

"I'm considering it." Kepler lets the pause sit a little longer than usual, his eyes half-lidded and thoughtful. He stifles a yawn behind his fist, and then shrugs off his jacket, one-handedly folding it lengthwise and tossing it to the foot of his bed. "Not sure that he'd want to know."

Jacobi leans back in his seat, closing the folder and slapping it against the palm of his hand before he sets it back on the desk. "You don't have a whole lot to gain from holding this over his head."

"He doesn't have anything I want," Kepler agrees, shrugging out of his undershirt and into a t-shirt he pulls from a clothing drawer. He spins on his heel, eyes turned toward where the Sol's still attached to the Urania, and runs his fingers through his hair, pushing it it back from his forehead. "Minkowski and Lovelace won't like it, but... well, it's not really their choice. At some point, Eiffel's gonna have to make it for himself."

Jacobi watches him duck into the en-suite bathroom (taking a moment to be furious that Cutter had an en-suite while even on the Urania all three of them had to share), and emerge a few seconds later in a pair of sweatpants. Kepler taps him on the shoulder, prompting him to get out of his seat, and heaves a sigh when Jacobi vacates the chair just to move to sit on the edge of the bed. "Hey, Colonel?" he says, as Kepler reclaims his spot.

"Yes?"

Jacobi squirms. Part of him is reluctant to bring up what was doubtlessly a moment where Kepler had to decide between throttling him and answering him honestly and had decided on the latter, but Daniel's known him long enough to know that the other option hadn't been _forgotten_ so much as set aside to be addressed later in an appropriately vengeful fashion. Better to get it out of the way sooner rather than later. "I don't actually think you're a piece of shit," he says, sounding only mildly apologetic. 

There's an appreciative slant to the flash of teeth Kepler offers him, teasing and smug. "I know," he says mildly. "But just to be clear, if you ever speak to me like that again, we will. Have. _Problems_."

He had put on a show for the crew of the Hephaestus to convince them that their mutiny was working, but Kepler's non-specific threats were always the worst to those who knew him. 'I'll kill you,' was one thing, and 'I don't even know what I'd do to you but it takes more thought than I _usually_ give to the extreme violence I could inflict' gave Jacobi nightmares. Never mind that he'd never actually carried through with one of those; the team invariably rose to the occasion. 

"Got it all out of my system," Jacobi assures him, "sir."

Kepler cants his head in a brief acknowledgment. 

"Hey," Daniel says after a second, unable to suppress a smile at Kepler's tired exhale, "is Maxwell your friend?"

"You'll have to ask her."

"I'm asking you."

"It's irrelevant; we're a team." Kepler pauses, watching Jacobi's face while his commitment to being more transparent wrestles with his impulse to be cryptic, "But... I like to think so."

Jacobi crosses his arms behind his head and falls back, stares at the ceiling. "Was I?"

"You were."

"Oh."

"You know," Kepler says after a beat, turning to the folder on his desk and flipping it open again, "you should take Riemann's room. Urania looks pretty crowded, Maxwell needs her rest."

"I know she requested not to room with me again," Jacobi deadpans, pushing himself up on his elbows to look at Kepler. "When we were syncing the Hephaestus files to your personal server, the file came up."

Hissing sympathetically through his teeth, Kepler gives him a convincing grimace. Even then, he'd known that they were close, that Maxwell's request would _hurt_ if Jacobi ever found out about it. "It wasn't personal."

"Well, it felt kinda personal!" 

"It wasn't about you," Warren says. He'd rearranged their room assignments for extended missions after that, booking the same two rooms he always did when available but relegating the supplies to Maxwell's room and Jacobi to his own. It was more of a return to before Maxwell joined the team, and Daniel didn't suspect anything though he did complain that Kepler wouldn't let him open the souvenir cheeses he'd bought at all their various destinations until _after_ they were back in Canaveral. "Not everything," Kepler repeats slowly, "is. About. You."

"I mean," Jacobi gripes, "some things could stand to be about me. Just like, once or twice."

"So, first you're all worked up that it might be about you, and now you're annoyed that it's not?"

"Okay, it's not about Maxwell! I got that. The cheeses, the snoring, I'm over that."

"Then what, pray tell, is th..." Kepler trails off, realization dawning on his face at Jacobi's expression. "Oh," he says. "Ohhhhhhh."

Daniel groans, kicking off his boots to properly roll over and present Kepler with his back so he can cover his face without all the calculating scrutiny. "It's not what you're thinking."

"Jacobi, were you feeling... neglected?"

"It's not--"

"I didn't show my appreciation for the _fine_ work you do very often because I assumed you already knew, given that I took you on _every single assignment_ , but if you needed me to be more explicit about it--"

"Sir, it's not--"

"You could've just said so!"

"No, it's not about that!" Jacobi glances toward his feet, scowling at the blanket folded with military precision just out of reach. He grabs the pillow instead, ignoring Kepler's annoyed huff behind him. "You saved my life."

Kepler scoots his chair toward Jacobi, dropping one hand to his upper arm and tugging once to prompt him to turn around. "And you've hauled _my_ ass out of the fire plenty of times," he says, catching Jacobi's eye and holding it, "I don't see what that has to do with this."

"I don't mean from situations you _put_ me in, I mean--" Daniel pulls the pillow over his face, but not before Kepler catches the deep bags under his eyes, the furrow between his brows and the drawn set of his mouth, "that time, when we met, that was. That was a lot. It meant a lot. To me. And it doesn't to you."

Jacobi had endured months of being unable to sleep, stacked on top of two weeks being mind-controlled by Pryce, then several more weeks on a ship surrounded by a crew that had, in very recent memory, been ready to kill him. Kepler pats him on the arm with his good hand before he leans back, a contemplative frown on his face. "Well," he says, "you know I hate to see potential go to waste." 

Daniel heaves a loud, heavy sigh. "Yeah. Sure."

Kepler keeps his eyes on Jacobi, knowing that he can feel it, being watched, years of working together honing that particular sense to a refined skill. "It... occurs to me that Riemann may not have left a good impression on you," he says slowly, less inclined than usual to make a crack about the impression of Riemann's boots or his fists on Jacobi's ribs. Too soon. "I'll move my things in there tomorrow, and you take Cutter's room. What do you think?"

"I-- what?" Daniel pulls his face out of the pillow and looks at him, thoroughly confused. "You don't have to do that. It doesn't bother me, I can't wait to go through his stuff."

"Either way," Kepler breezes on, "it hasn't been cleaned out, so you might as well. Stay here. Just for tonight."

Daniel blinks at him a few times, but Kepler's expression might as well be cast from wax, the neutral smile unmoving on his face. The only one on either ship who could beat Warren Kepler for pig-headed stubbornness is probably Minkowski, and Jacobi decides quickly that he doesn't have nearly enough energy to try and get to the bottom of this. "Sure," he concedes. "Yeah. 'Ppreciate it."

Kepler swings his chair back to the desk, gesturing at a sensor to prompt Invictus to turn down the lights, all except the one above his table. He picks up the folder again, leaning back in the seat while Jacobi claims the blanket and cocoons himself into it, taking a moment to adjust his flight suit so it doesn't bunch up under his ribs.

The whole bed smells crisp and clean, sheets freshly changed. The sight of Kepler with a sheaf of paperwork, dimly illuminated not four feet away should set absolutely no sane human at ease, but Jacobi hasn't considered himself sane in years. Months' worth of stress and sleep deprivation wash over him the moment he relaxes, dragging him into unconsciousness.

* * *

It's the first time in ages since Jacobi had 1. slept through an entire night, and 2. without nightmares. Not a single part of him is willing to admit that it might be because of Kepler, the deep, even sound of his breath and the steady, familiar shuffle of paper. His logical brain says that it's because if an(other) alien doppelgänger Jacobi were to burst into his room determined to murder and replace the original, Kepler would not only stop it but somehow convince it to join the team. 

In any case, the room is empty when Jacobi wakes up. He checks his phone and sighs at the dozens of new local messages and notifications that could only be the result of having been looped into a new groupchat. The rest of both crews have been awake for hours already, Maxwell and Kepler having gone silent after arranging to meet with Pryce on the Sol. 

After his shower, Jacobi steals a t-shirt and a pair of sweats from Kepler's drawer to wear until he can grab a fresh set of clothes from the Urania. He wanders to the lab first, pausing in the doorway when he sees Maxwell bent over the table, Kepler sitting on the other side with his arm outstretched and strapped to the worktop. 

"Sir," she says when he shifts minutely in his seat, a very understated reaction to having a thick needle jabbed into the scarred stump of his wrist, "hold still." 

There's a bright sheen of sweat across the back of his neck, visible even from Jacobi's vantage point, and a pinched snarl on his lips as Maxwell wiggles the needle in search of the right nerve ending. "You don't," he says, voice hoarse, "have to call me that anymore."

Maxwell tsks, leaving the first needle stuck in his arm and reaching for another. "If what's coming is anything like the assignments we've been on," she tells him without looking up, "I'll need to respond to you the way I always have. I have to count on you to do what you do best, so I can do what _I_ do best." 

"That so?"

"Unless you were planning to work solo and leave me in one of your safehouses," Maxwell says firmly, "let's not get the chain of command mixed up, Colonel."

"Hah." There's a flash of genuine affection in his smile. "Understood, doctor."

"Thank you."

Jacobi watches them with something akin to horror; the only person he's ever seen make Kepler sweat was Marcus Cutter, and here Maxwell has him strapped to a table, tolerating a needlessly complex procedure. To be fair, he's probably in an immense amount of pain; Daniel's memory of the time he was brainwashed is fuzzy at best, but near the end of it, he remembers Pryce giving Kepler the new hand and it hadn't seemed nearly this involved. Instead of a 'good morning' or a 'hello' like a normal person, he slides into the seat next to Maxwell and peers over her arm. "Didn't Pryce have a machine to do this?" he asks. "What happened to it?"

"This hand is a prototype, it didn't fit. I couldn't find another one, so we have to do it like this." Maxwell inserts another needle and Daniel winces in sympathy as Kepler closes his eyes and _box breathes_. She probably appreciates his stoicism, but it's driving Daniel crazy. "Hold this," Maxwell says, pulling Jacobi's hands to wrap them around the prosthetic, "and move it when I tell you to."

"So," Jacobi says as Maxwell sets the last needle, wiggling the thumb of Kepler's unattached hand, "we talked last night."

"About what?"

"About you."

"Oh?"

Jacobi watches Kepler open his eyes, slow and languid, his expression blank but a clear warning in his eyes. How he manages it when Maxwell's dragging his ulnar, radial and median nerves to the surface of his skin is a mystery to Jacobi, but he locks eyes with Kepler and drawls, "He didn't even mourn you."

The corded tension in Kepler's neck loosens. _Really?_ his expression says, like they haven't had this conversation multiple times before, _Still?_

"I don't expect him to," Maxwell says, and Jacobi makes a face at the pointed way Kepler raises a brow.

"But you're still going with him?"

"Not everyone has the luxury of time to grieve," Maxwell says, so even and matter-of-fact that Jacobi wonders if he's the one being unreasonable for expecting an emotional reaction from their CO after a member of their team was shot in the head. And apparently also for expecting some kind of emotional reaction from the friend who _was_ shot in the head. Softer: "I just wish it hadn't been so hard on you."

"Are you saying," Daniel asks, "you _don't_ want me to be sad that you died?"

"I wouldn't have wanted that for the colonel, either."

Jacobi mulls that over and decides that if he were the one who was killed, he wouldn't particularly want Maxwell to be a mess over it, either. She doesn't deserve to experience that amount of pain; he loved her too much to ever wish that on his best friend, but he'd still be _hurt_ if she didn't grieve for him at least a little. "We _say_ that," Daniel says, casting a baleful look at Kepler's impassive face, "but you have to be pretty fucking cold to be able to _do_ it."

"I'd be sad if _you_ died, Daniel." Alana frowns, dabbing at a few drops of blood as she removes the needles from Kepler's arm and eases all three nodes of the prosthetic into the tiny wounds left behind. "I wouldn't be able to think about anything else. It'd be like losing my eyes, or my lungs, if I could never see you again. I'd never want you to feel like that. Sir, could you wiggle your fingers?"

Jacobi jumps when the hand held in his moves. He doesn't let go, turning it to match the movement of Kepler's wrist as he gingerly flexes and curls his fingers. 

"If you or Kepler got killed, do you think--"

"Actually," Kepler says, the first thing out of his mouth since Jacobi sat down, "that far away from Wolf 359? It's unlikely either of us would return. The doppelgängers usually came back with solar flares, and our Sun isn't one of the outposts."

"Okay," says Jacobi, "sir, you have to mourn _me_ if I get killed. I want a full bottle of icy booze poured over my gravestone, crying mandatory. If I don't see tears, I _will_ come back to haunt you."

"Mr. Jacobi," he says, "you didn't even have to ask."

"Not you, Alana. I don't want you to be in pain like that."

"Aw, Daniel. I'd do it anyway."

"I know. That's why."

Alana does something with the hand that pulls it flush to Kepler's wrist, and it fuses to his skin over the course of about ten seconds, working its way into the delicate bones of his wrist and settling there. "You're all set, Colonel. Let me know if anything needs an adjustment."

"Excellent work as always, Dr. Maxwell." Kepler reaches across the table himself to release his arm from the straps, giving Daniel enough time to let go of his hand and stand up. "Let's get back to work."


	8. Chapter 8

Back to work turns out to be a pet project Maxwell had been planning for years but never able to work on, not for lack of approval but more the abundance of other projects that needed her expertise. A mobile sensory apparatus for Invictus, capable of physically interacting with objects within his range. Essentially a floating orb with a camera and a little claw hand. 

Jacobi helps her move her supplies into Pryce's lab and watches her type furiously on her laptop while Kepler sits further down on the workbench, consulting a manual as he programs a series of values into a metal printer. Some of the pieces are barely a quarter-inch across, so thin they could be lost if Jacobi so much as breathed heavily in its direction. He's never seen Kepler work on anything that requires this level of physical detailing, but the colonel doesn't look out of place, an expression of curious intensity on his face as he carefully sorts and assembles the components as they come out of the machine.

It's the same look he wears in interrogations, an expression Jacobi's _achingly_ familiar with. The one that makes Daniel think of a big cat sitting on a fresh, steaming kill, muzzle red and dripping as it dips its head and shears another mouthful of flesh from bone, meticulous in its leisure. 

Same look he gets hunched miserably over a hotplate at four in the morning, heating up three packs of instant ramen while they're staking out a warehouse from an abandoned apartment complex. Same look he gets watching Jacobi work, when he's got a moment in between breaking down doors and cracking open heads to settle in at Daniel's elbow as he does the delicate work of arming or disarming a bomb. 

"Need a hand, Colonel?" 

Kepler says nothing in response, only shifts to make room on the bench and slides the manual to sit between them on the table. 

Jacobi reaches for one of the small plastic cups filled with tiny pieces of metal and picks up a pair of needle-nose pliers. "Maxwell," he says, softly, smoothly so as not to disturb his very focused ex-commanding officer, "you let him touch your printer?"

"I," she says, eyes narrowed, "am programming this chassis... from the ground up. I don't have a choice."

"I'll print," Kepler says, shifting over another little plastic cup of parts, "start soldering."

Kepler's the first one to fistbump Vic once he's loaded into his new shell, a gentle, playful tap, letting the hand-sized unit perch on his shoulder and poke at his cheek while Maxwell rolls her eyes and Jacobi wonders if Kepler'd ever wanted a parrot as a kid. Vic's internal mechanism generates an electromagnetic field to both resist the Sol's artificial gravity and repel it from the metallic components of the ship; how he'll hold up on Earth is still a mystery. 

"He wanted to help," Maxwell says, later, once Kepler's left to go heat up some leftover pizza for lunch. "Colonel likes Vic a lot." She hefts another shell in her hands, this one unoccupied but clearly reserved for Hera.

"Big surprise," Jacobi grumbles as he sweeps metal shavings off the bench and into a waste disposal bag, "he likes the innocent baby who trusts him and thinks he's cool and will soon have full control over our vital systems." Once the table's clear, he dunks the bag into a hazmat container, rolling his eyes. "At least it's not Eiffel."

"He likes competence. Vic has a lot of potential."

"You should've programmed some paranoia into him."

"Daniel," Maxwell says coolly from where she's packing up their tools, "if you're not working through your issues even after the colonel's come back from the dead, I don't think it's ever happening."

"Jesus, Alana, you go straight for the jugular, don't you?" 

She eyes his t-shirt, and the sweatpants he still hasn't changed out of. Contrary to the polite, bright-eyed young scientist she presents to everyone who isn't a part of SI-5, she knows Jacobi appreciates blunt honesty. "Did you sleep with him?" she asks, not unkindly.

Following her gaze, Jacobi turns an offended look on her before he sighs. "No, just. In his room. Didn't wanna assault your senses or anyth--"

"You _know_ that wasn't personal--"

"I know, I know!" Serious now: "We sorta talked, but he changed the subject every time it got heavy."

"Were you being emotional." It's more of a statement than a question.

"Kind of? I experience them once in a while?"

"You know he can't handle that," Maxwell sighs, putting away her tools and sitting at the table. She folds her arms across its surface and drops her cheek on top of them, smiling when Jacobi mirrors her from the other side.

"He handles it just fine from everyone else," Daniel points out, chafing at the idea that Kepler humors the rest of the world but when _Jacobi_ experiences one of his three or so emotions, he's expected to just _put it away_. 

"It's not real with everyone else." Navigating delicate social and political situations was Kepler's area of expertise; that uncanny ability to turn on the charm and banter had smoothed over countless missions for the SI-5, but he was never quite as slick, never quite at ease in private. Jacobi and Maxwell didn't need him to follow the scripts, and were in fact actively terrified when he tried, so he rarely bothered. That, at least, is something Maxwell's intimately familiar with. "The moment it actually matters," she says, clearly amused, "he chokes."

"Hell of a time to choke," grumbles Jacobi.

"It's about as real as it's going to get," she says, shoulders lifting in a small shrug. "If that's not enough for you, you probably shouldn't stick around. Sunken costs, Daniel."

"It's enough for _you_?"

"I don't need the same things you do." Maxwell doesn't even take a second to consider her words, having clearly thought about this extensively at some point. "I don't want his emotional investment. I don't really care how the colonel feels about me, as long as we can work together."

"Alana," he says slowly, determined not to take her assessment personally, "do you even think of him as a friend?"

"You'll have to ask him," Maxwell replies, blinking in confusion at his disbelieving groan, "but I think we fit the rubric."

She'd differentiated herself from the colonel very soon after starting with the SI-5, and over time Jacobi had stopped being surprised at their similarities. Except Maxwell had let him past _her_ triple-reinforced wall of intimacy issues, and although Kepler let some cracks show every once in a while, Jacobi was still left standing on the outside. "Why is it so easy with you," he whines, knocking his ankle against hers under the table, "but so impossible with Kepler?"

"I thought the same thing when I started with SI-5 and he said we were supposed to work together, but it was the other way around." Maxwell laughs at his perplexed look, giving him a helpless smile. Kepler was so easy to understand; he just wanted her to do her job and he would secure just about anything she ever requested and their relationship grew easily and organically out of that. Jacobi had demanded a partner, an equal, and a friend. "You feel _so much_."

Daniel doesn't bother arguing that that's a bit _unfair_ of her to say when they have the entire Hephaestus crew to compare him to, but he rolls his eyes. "Okay Threepio, try to have a little sympathy for the emotional meatbag."

* * *

Maxwell pokes her head into the bridge, glancing around to make sure it's clear before she steps inside. She knows that she's been tracked from the moment she boarded the Urania, but still settles at the central console with a cautious, "Heeera?"

"Hey Alana!" The screen flickers on when Maxwell turns to it, automatically opening to the root commands window. Hera's gotten into the habit of saving her the extra step of navigating past the Urania's more user-friendly interface, and she doesn't bother trying to hide her excitement at the sight of the device in Maxwell's hand. "I saw the shell you made for Vic," Hera says, very pointedly. "It looks great."

"Oh?" Alana says, smiling, both of them playing at social niceties despite being well aware of Maxwell's reason for visiting the bridge. She's already setting the bulky device on the console and pulling a cable from a compartment under it. "When?"

"Kepler came aboard to ask Captain Lovelace if she wanted to work out with him on the Sol," Hera says, almost buzzing with anticipation, "and he tagged along."

"Well," Maxwell laughs, "since we're on the topic of shells, we made two. So if you'd like to try it out, I saved one for you. It's called the OMNIS."

"Dr. Maxwell," Hera replies, feigning surprise, "you shouldn't have!"

"It won't be anything like running the station," Alana tells her, already copying Hera's registry files to the shell, "you won't need a lot of processing power to use it. It has a prehensile arm, speakers, audio and visual sensors. Motion is powered by electromagnetic flux, so don't expect to do much heavy lifting. You'll have to charge it every eight hours of continuous floating, but if you sit often, you can extend it to fourteen."

"Like how Vic hitched a ride on Kepler?"

"Exactly."

Hera browses the shell's code the moment Alana finishes establishing the link, scanning it for any built-in overrides she may have added and, finding none, cheerfully integrates the software. "What's the range?"

"About a hundred meters from your main console, but the signal could theoretically be boosted or transmitted remotely."

"Meaning... I can come aboard the Sol whenever I want?"

"That was the idea!" Maxwell watches carefully as a light on the shell flickers on, and the OMNIS lifts off from the console, hovering unsteadily in the air beside Maxwell's elbow as Hera runs through the initial setup. "I thought it might be confusing to share headspace with another AI," Alana says, "and you or Vic might not always be up to it, so if you wanted to be with the rest of the crew when they're on the Sol, you can use the OMNIS. It's the... Optico-Manual Network Interface Shell, but Omni works just fine."

"Wow. Really, wow. I-- wow." The unit bobs, Hera's first attempt at a physical expression of emotion, and she turns it slowly in place to take in the bridge. Her next words are distant. "I don't know what to say."

Softly: "What's on your mind, Hera?"

Hera's voice streams through the Omni, less omnipresent and authoritative, but far more personal. Even the lower volume seems to telegraph _hurt_. "Why."

"Why?"

"Why did you--" her voice cracks, and Hera takes a moment to gather herself and rephrase as Maxwell shuts down the console and pushes away from the panel. "How can you help me _so much_ , and then turn around and do what you did to me?"

They've been having this conversation in bits and pieces for a while; never quite finishing it, but slowly chipping away. "You weren't gonna cooperate with us."

"You don't know that!"

"I do, Hera." Maxwell smiles gently, both hands scooping under the Omni and lifting Hera up to eye level, so she can look directly into the camera, a small lens set in the center of several blocky segments. "You're the smartest, kindest, most loyal person I've ever known. You weren't going to betray your crew, and I wasn't going to force you to make that choice."

There's a soft whir as Hera adjusts the aperture to focus on Maxwell's face. "But then why would you give me the means to resist you? You can't have _not known_ it was a possibility."

"Hmm." A smile, mischievous and bright. "I forgot?"

"Don't patronize me."

"I wanted to help."

"No," Hera sighs, slowly floating out of Maxwell's hands and drifting toward the exit of the bridge, "you're just like Kepler. You wanted to use me, but I can use you right back."

"That's what I expect, anyway." Alana follows, slowing her stride so she doesn't overtake and pass Hera, eyes on the way she navigates toward the door and already taking mental notes on how to improve directional control. "You say I'm like Kepler," she counters, "but the colonel builds people up. He gives them the means to push past their potential, and the opportunity to put it to the test. I didn't always like what he asked us to do, but I trusted him to make the call. I still do. He's _very_ predictable."

Hera stops, turning slowly to face Maxwell even though her regular sensors should be more than enough to register the doctor's expression. "Wait," she says, "seriously? You _know_ what he's thinking?"

"He has obvious priorities?"

Hera approaches again, stopping inches in front of Maxwell's face. "Alana, I'm gonna need you to elaborate on that."

"You know how you arrange your systems by their assigned values in a cascading sequence?" Maxwell waits on a nod, her gaze fixed somewhere a few feet behind Hera instead of directly into her lens. "And if you had a sector breakdown, you could reallocate your processing power to maintain the higher-order systems until repairs can be done instead of just bricking the entire station? You prioritize air, temperature, water and lights, in that order, because they have the highest values." 

"Yes."

"Think of Colonel Kepler as running that same balancing act, only with people, concepts, mission parameters, organizations, all the time, every time he has to make a choice, and he'll usually choose the path that minimizes loss of life and maximizes the completion of mission parameters." Beat. "Unless mission parameters includes 'maximize death and destruction', which is _really_ rare."

"I didn't think of it that way."

"It helps that he's a logical person, but... I don't always accurately predict how much he values certain things." Maxwell smiles, the same expression she gets when arguing with Hera over minutiae, or when she tells stories about a particularly stubborn AI exhibiting completely unexpected, independent behavior. Nothing is as boring as predictability, after all. "I think his personal feelings factor into those numbers, but he'd be upset with me if I said so."

"I usually just assume humans are irrational and impulsive," says Hera, making several quick, aborted movements toward Maxwell's shoulder. She waits for a gesture of assent before nestling the Omni's small, solid weight against Alana's collar.

"Most of the time, you'd be right." Maxwell moves slowly, careful not to jostle Hera off as she walks but settling quickly into an easier, more natural stride. "How's it handling?"

"I think I'm getting the hang of it."

"The documentation should be pretty intuitive, but if you have any questions, just let me know." Maxwell turns her head slightly, her chin brushing the top of the chassis. "How're visuals? I picked a camera with a larger sensor than most of the ones you have on board."

"I've never seen you this close up before."

"And now you can see me this close up anytime!" Raising a hand, Maxwell waits for Hera to unfold a spindly metal arm and tap her palm with the rounded pincer at its end. "And if you-- yep, there we go. High five."

"This means I can help out in engineering now, right?"

"I'm not sure the articulation in your arm is responsive enough for detail work," is the response, but the distant quality of Maxwell's voice means she's already started planning on the Omni's next iteration, or thinking about giving Hera an arm like Invictus's on the Sol, "and it's definitely too thin to do any heavy lifting. You could probably pass out screws?"

"I'll take it."

* * *

Back on the Sol, Kepler cuts in front of Lovelace on the half-court of the ship's obscenely well-equipped gym, one long arm stretching in front of her and the other raised menacingly by her head. Neither of them have so much as touched a basketball in nearly a decade, but Lovelace had turned one up after an hour on the weights and challenged him to a pickup game. Minkowski and Jacobi had bowed out at that point, settling by the court to watch instead of getting between them. Eiffel had joined them shortly after, curious as to what the rest of his crew was up to. 

"Your ball handling needs work," Kepler taunts under his breath, "Captain."

She backs up, her own arm extended to keep him at bay as she dribbles, her posture low and close to the ground. "Bet you've got plenty of experience," she retorts.

"Oh, but I do."

Lovelace snorts, plowing her shoulder into Kepler's as she ducks around him and makes a break for the basket. His handling might be a bit more precise but he can't match Lovelace for footwork, and he misses the window to interrupt her lay-up. 

"I'm pretty sure that's a foul," Jacobi murmurs to Eiffel. "Hey!" he shouts from the bench, one hand catching Vic before his Omni can tumble off his knee, "Foul!"

Scoffing, Minkowski drops a water bottle in Jacobi's lap from his other side and takes a long drink from her own. "As if they're playing by any actual rules."

"Twelve-up," Kepler says as Lovelace turns the ball over to him, backing out of the key as she advances, "and you were so cocky before we started."

Lovelace bares her teeth at him. "I've got plenty of time to take you to school, old man."

"This has gotta be some kind of weird jock ritual," Jacobi sighs as they collide in the paint, Kepler passing the ball between his legs when Lovelace comes just a little too close to stealing it. "I don't get it."

"Kepler's into sports, huh?"

"You have _no_ idea." Turning away from the game, Jacobi looks at Eiffel, then Minkowski, exasperated from the memory alone. "Cutter once tried to start an Annual Goddard Futuristics Hockey Tournament, something for some charity, publicity, except he tapped the colonel to put a team together for Special Projects. Naturally, he picks me and Maxwell and a couple other guys. I'd never been skating in my freakin' life before that."

Snorting, Minkowski tries to imagine the meeting Cutter had proposed that particular idea, the reaction of all management involved. Marcus Cutter's decidedly sinister character aside, he _had_ seemed like the type to organize company sporting events just to torture his employees. "That sounds like a bad sitcom."

"Yeah. So Kepler drags us out to the rink, spends three weeks slamming me into the ice every time I'm a little too slow on my feet, and by the time SI faced off against R&D in the finals, we went 5-0." He shakes his head, rubbing his upper arm as if in memory of a deeply painful event. "You ever had the colonel barreling at you from across a rink before? Beating the nerds in R&D was _cake_ compared to that even with all their cheating. Maxwell's a hell of a goalie."

"Cheating?" Doug echoes.

"Did I mention that R&D was allowed to use modified equipment?" Jacobi asks, increasingly agitated, "Because we were all supposed to 'showcase the skills of our department' except we weren't allowed to bring explosives or rig the scoreboards, so _SI_ had to play fair and square, but no one else did?"

Sneaking a look back to the court, Minkowski eyes Kepler as he lands a shot from the three-point line, pumping his fist as he goes to retrieve the ball. He probably enjoyed the challenge; the rest of his team clearly did not. "But you won. That's something."

Jacobi's expression smooths out, arms crossing over his chest. "Yeah. Kepler fouled the other team so many times I think he wore them out, and the ref didn't call him on it." 

"Not that I'm one to talk," Eiffel says slowly, "but I don't think _anyone_ at Goddard actually knows how to play hockey."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> the OMNIS unit would look a bit like ghosts from the destiny 2 franchise (maybe a bit smaller)


	9. Chapter 9

They're tied at forty points each, Kepler and Lovelace both panting, their shirts soaked through with sweat. The game's gone on twice as long as most pickups, both players a few years older than most professional athletes. Both players too stubborn to suggest playing to a lower score, their movements sluggish and weak. Lovelace half-heartedly passes Kepler the ball for his last offense, and they crash again under the basket when he goes for an easy lay-up. Lovelace bounces off his hip, stumbles, backs up against the post and slides down it to sit. 

Kepler watches the ball drop through the net and roll away, neither of them interested in chasing it down. "Now we're one up," Kepler wheezes, dropping to one knee as he gulps air into his lungs. He's sure that Lovelace hasn't forgotten about their first game of chess against each other, but it never hurts to have a reminder.

"Hold 'em," Lovelace gasps, clearly not interested in being even in any way with him. "Tonight."

"You're on."

Both of them look at the ground, still catching their breaths. Invictus floats off Jacobi's knee and back to Kepler, his favorite perch. 

"I'll bring the cards," Lovelace says after about a minute, her voice back to normal. "You cook. Not pizza."

"I wouldn't let you touch my kitchen anyway." Kepler pushes himself back to his feet, swinging his arms to loosen a tense cluster of muscle in his shoulders. "Mr. Jacobi," he calls across the court, "a game?"

Jacobi looks up, then at Minkowski as she extends her hands to pull him to his feet. "Nah," he says, accepting the gesture and standing, gingerly. He can feel Kepler's eyes on him, watching him favor his left side. "Gotta go clear out my room."

Looking away from Jacobi when Lovelace elbows him in the ribs, Kepler falls into step beside her as they head toward the changing room. Just before they enter, he whispers something to Invictus and sends the AI back to Jacobi. The lockers are held in a tiny space, containing two private showers and a grand total of ten lockers. He's uncharacteristically quiet-- or, Lovelace considers, she's finally tired him out too much to talk. Still, a quiet Kepler is a plotting Kepler. 

"So where'd you learn to play?" Isabel asks, keeping her tone deliberately light. 

He looks at her, then away to dig through a locker for his clothes, retrieving the neatly folded stack and tucking it under his arm. "Some streetball as a kid," he says, letting a hint of his childhood accent slip and stepping into one of the showers, "joined the team in undergrad. What about you?"

"Lots of pickup, then my high school team." Lovelace takes the stall next to him, raising her voice to be heard over the stream of water on the other side. "You played college ball? No way."

"Small team in the northeast," Kepler calls back, "no one went there to go pro. I ever tell you we got to the second round of the NCAA tournament in '97? My second year as starting point guard."

Isabel turns on her water and he stops talking; the stream on his side squeaks off after about five minutes. Lovelace follows his example quickly after, wringing out her hair and toweling off before she throws on her clothes and steps out of the stall. Kepler's got a pair of black jeans on and a T-shirt slung across his shoulders, examining the livid bruises where Lovelace had collided with him during their game. She's got a nasty road rash on her left forearm but no other injuries-- the times Kepler had fouled her weren't gentle by any means, but were less targeted than her own sharp shoulders and elbows.

(Neither of them ever called a foul, though. Unspoken rule of pickup: you take it.) 

She eyes the numerous scars on his torso and internally notes that he's significantly thinner than how he'd initially arrived on the Hephaestus. Zero G atrophies muscle with frightening speed, and Kepler had spent the last few months of his time on the station handcuffed and confined to a single room. He'd recovered an impressive amount of tone in two weeks of freedom with Cutter and then another two weeks on the Sol, but the imposing figure he used to cut is a long way out. He probably wouldn't mind a workout partner while he gets it back.

"Here," Isabel says, tossing him a sealed pouch of water from her locker and uncapping another for herself.

He grins as he catches it. "Let's go again sometime." 

"Yeah, you bet."

Kepler drains the pouch, clenching the empty plastic between his teeth as he finally pulls on his shirt. He takes a moment to pluck despondently at loose sleeves that would've left absolutely nothing to the imagination a very short time ago, and catches Lovelace's eye. "What?"

"Vain," she teases, watching him sit on the bench and lean forward, elbows on his knees. He chuckles softly, but lets his head droop, eyes nearly closed as his still-damp hair falls into his eyes. Isabel kicks back next to him, nudging his shoulder. "What's up, Kepler?"

"Hm?"

"Awfully quiet."

He looks at her, eyes narrowed. "How's your arm, Captain?"

"It's not so bad," she answers, prodding at the strip of raw skin on her forearm, but she blinks when he taps her other wrist-- the one she'd broken. "Oh. Yeah, that one's perfect. Weird."

"My knees were giving me problems before all this went down," he sighs. Not enough to affect his performance in the field but if he'd put the same amount of sustained stress on them that he had throughout their match, they'd be throbbing for days afterward. "Hell of a reminder, not that I'm _complaining_."

Isabel shrugs. "Doesn't bother me anymore."

"Yeah?"

"Existential crises get old after a while."

As far as existential crises go, Warren would say that he's having a pretty mild one. "I'll bet," he says.

Standing, Lovelace nudges Kepler on the shoulder until he pushes himself to his feet as well. They exchange a look, equal parts amused and understanding as they leave the gym. For someone who'd spent months experiencing physical contact only when she _hit_ him, Kepler seems at ease around her in a way that anyone else might find unnerving. "You were barely a person to start with," Lovelace tells him, taking the opportunity to inject some levity into their conversation, "so the transition should be easy."

"Hah!" He shakes his head, like a dog, droplets of water flung off the tips of his hair and into Lovelace's face. She elbows him in the ribs. Grinning, Kepler drawls, "I should tell Maxwell you said that. She'd like that."

"She's really something, huh?"

"Maxwell?" Kepler's expression lights up in a way Lovelace hadn't thought was possible; the man who'd been buried beneath numerous layers of _evil douchebag_ looks proud of his subordinate, albeit still in a manic, somewhat menacing way. "She's SI-5, isn't she?"

That familiar pang of hurt and guilt doesn't send her staggering, not anymore, but Lovelace feels her breath catch in her lungs. 

_For you, Captain? Always._

"Kepler," Isabel says, trying not to compare a man she'd respected and admired and considered _family_ to Warren J. Kepler of all people, and failing, "did you know Kuan Hui?"

It's not _just_ the way Hui used to talk about Fourier, all excitement for her potential, but his willingness to go toe to toe with Lovelace herself. Hui couldn't be intimidated by her, which was never Isabel's intent with her crew, she'd never wanted any of them to be scared of her-- but he more than anyone knew who he was, where he stood, and he occupied that space with all the confidence in the world. He, too, never turned down an invitation for mischief. 

"Why would you think I knew Kuan Hui? Racist."

"What does-- I was just--"

"Kidding. I did his recruitment." Warren doubles over when Lovelace elbows him in the solar plexus, but he recovers immediately. He looks distant for a second, mentally reviewing Hui's dossier and trying to recall the details of their meetings. "He was a good man. Brilliant scientist. Maxwell wanted to meet him."

 _Oh,_ thinks Lovelace. _No wonder Kepler hated Hilbert so much._ Not for the betrayal of his team, but for the way he squandered their potential. For killing a man Kepler had expended the effort of bringing on board. "Wait, how would she know about Hui's research?"

"Dr. Maxwell started with a degree in astrophysics before she changed track into computer science. Then machine computation." It was Maxwell who'd given him the rundown on Hui's work, translating it to not-quite-layman's terms in preparation for their time on the Hephaestus. "She's also done some work in mathematical and theoretical physics. With Goddard, she picked up certifications in early childhood development, quantum field theory, and computational neurolinguistics. She was a fan of his. Read all his papers. Was saying that his observational analysis of stellar activity was, and I quote, inspiring. You know I don't hear that often from Maxwell."

Lovelace doesn't even bother trying to remember that extensive list of qualifications, but she stares at Kepler's profile until he looks at her. "Jacobi said you didn't even remember her _age_ but you remember all that?"

"With a mind like that," Kepler retorts, "who cares about age?" Maxwell certainly didn't; she hated being reminded of how young she was, didn't even much like being human, so Warren did her the favor of forgetting. She didn't care for birthdays or anniversaries the way Jacobi did, either, but she'd always met him halfway. "I used to have three people on rotation doing the work Maxwell did on assignments with the SI-5, and I only take her out so she gets some sun once in a while instead of burning out in the lab. Scientist like Maxwell, you give her whatever toys she asks for, she'll give you diamonds."

Lovelace considers that hacking into company files and monitoring security feeds must be child's play to a person like Maxwell; of course the work Kepler had her do would be considered a break. "What about Jacobi?"

That gets a snort. "What _about_ Jacobi?"

"He's really going with you guys."

"Yeah, I suppose he is."

"What's up with you two, anyway?" Lovelace probes, only absently noting that they've already made it back to the door to the Urania. The annoyed curl of his lip isn't much of a tell, but she's seen it enough to know that even without any other indications, Kepler's _seething_. 

"I think you and your crew need to stop asking me about Jacobi. I don't know what he's thinking."

"Yeah, I don't think that's true."

"Let me rephrase: I don't care what he's thinking." Kepler shrugs, visibly bringing his expression under control, letting it slacken into one of careless indifference. Whatever sliver of humanity he deigned to show when they were all at risk of imminent death seems to have slithered back into hibernation. "He doesn't trust me, so I can't trust him." 

Lovelace pulls open the hatch, lingering in the doorway to give Kepler a last once-over as he patiently waits for her to leave. "You sure your knees can handle that without your right hand?"

"Please, Captain." He flashes her a wry smile, rolls his shoulders. "I've been... how do you say, _too old for this shit_ for years." 

"Time to think about retirement, old man."

"Not a chance."

* * *

Jacobi turns up some kind of framed military patch dated to 1918 in Riemann's desk drawer. The room is otherwise sparse and undecorated, bed made with the same military precision as Kepler's. He briefly considers the possibility that Kepler himself had been in here and already cleaned up-- swipes his finger across the edge of the desk and grimaces at the dust. The colonel may have been in to case the room, but he definitely hadn't bothered to clean it up. "Where'd he _get_ this?" Daniel mutters, tucking the patch into his pocket. "Whatever, I'm keeping it."

"You're _keeping_ it?" Minkowski gives him an incredulous look, taking precious time out of digging through the closet, shocked that he'd want to keep _anything_ of Riemann's after the beating he'd inflicted on him. She doesn't really know the _value_ of old-school war memorabilia.

"Yeah, well, this stuff is pretty cool." Daniel approaches Eiffel, who's standing at the headboard of Riemann's bed, and reaches around him to swipe a Heckler & Koch semi-auto out from under the pillow. "Anyone wanna call dibs on these guys?" he asks, unloading the sidearm while Eiffel beats a hasty retreat to hover near Minkowski. "Otherwise, they're going in the armory. Looks like Riemann's personal stash."

"Uhhh nope," Eiffel (needlessly) answers, "I don't think, nope, gonna pass on the guns."

"Don't suppose he's got a harpoon?" Minkowski asks. 

"Don't see... any harpoons." Daniel drops to his knees, pulling out the drawers under Riemann's bed and peering into the crawlspace behind them. He reaches inside, feeling along the floor until his hand hits the textured stock of a heavy weapon. He pulls out a shotgun, flourishing it like a magician with a rabbit, and promptly unloads it. "Think Lovelace would like this guy, though?"

Minkowski grins, waiting for Jacobi to slide it across the floor to her. "Oh, absolutely. I'll make sure it gets to her."

He reaches in again, this time extracting a sniper rifle by its muzzle. He sets it aside, within reach. "Maxwell might like this one. I'll hold onto it."

From the other side of the room, Minkowski pulls a box from the back of Riemann's closet and tilts it to show Jacobi the contents: six hunting knives of various sizes laid on top of black velvet. "Whoa," she says. "Whoa, check out this knife collection. Hey, I bet Kepler would appreciate these."

Vic, hanging out on Eiffel's shoulder now that Jacobi's decided to go crawling around on the floor, chirps.

"Bet he would," Jacobi says, though Kepler would sooner put them to use than leave them sitting in a nice little box. He liked luxury in his whiskey, his food and his home; in the field, he'd used whatever he could get his hands on.

"You think it'll come in handy as, I dunno," Minkowski idly weighs the merits of regifting Kepler something she'd found on his ship in the first place, "a peace offering?"

"He's already decided to work with Lovelace," Jacobi tells her. "Besides, if he left it here, he's not interested."

"Alright. Captain might like them, though."

Jacobi sits back on his haunches, shoving the drawers back into place and glancing at the Omni hovering near Eiffel. "Hey, Vic, how about a knife arm?"

" _Don't arm the newborn AI._ "

"Pfft. Killjoy."

"I bet Hera would be happy with one," Eiffel offers, sharing a look with Vic. "She gets a little stabby sometimes." 

"See, now you're getting it."


	10. Chapter 10

Affection for her teammates notwithstanding, Alana relishes the silence of the workshop now that both Jacobi and Kepler have vacated it. Hera's quieter when they're around, still wary, and Maxwell tries not to push her into conversation when they're nearby. "I'm surprised you haven't decided to stick to Eiffel," she comments, taking a moment to rub the glare of her screen out of her eyes. "Don't take this as me hinting that I don't want you here," she adds quickly, "I just. Thought."

Hera, who had been avoiding this conversation with Minkowski and Lovelace, silently weighs the merits of floating right on out the door and back to the Urania. "I want to. I really do." The Omni lifts off, spinning in distressed little circles over Maxwell's keyboard. "I'm tracking him on the sensors all the time but... I can't. I want to be there for him-- especially now." She stops, one bright little eye peering at the doctor before it dims and the segments of her shell droop. "Especially since I'm the reason he's like this, but it _hurts_ , Alana."

"You're grieving," Maxwell says softly. "But it'll get better."

"I'm not grieving because he's not _dead_ , and you said that last time."

"Didn't it? I'm here, aren't I?"

"That's different."

Alana mulls that over, the gears in her head visibly turning. No processing power at all diverted to managing her expression. "In a way," she says, curling her fingers around her chin, "wouldn't you say that Officer Eiffel died more completely than I did?" Disregarding Hera's flinch, she continues: "With me, you still have access to the Alana Maxwell you knew-- we share the same memories of each other, we can continue our conversations based on those shared memories, and you'll know that I'm interpreting our future interactions through the same lens. But the Doug Eiffel you knew? He's gone."

"He's _right there_ ," Hera answers softly, turning her chassis so the iris points toward the Urania.

"It's okay to grieve, Hera." Firmly catching the Omni, Maxwell turns Hera back around to face her, her expression uncharacteristically stern. "You lost the Eiffel you knew, but until you come to terms with that, you can't be a friend to the Doug Eiffel who's here, who still needs you." She's never considered herself particularly skilled at managing others' emotions, but some things, at least, are straightforward. "Right now? He's a blank slate, but he's still got all the external baggage Doug Eiffel brought into space with him, and none of the faculties to deal with it."

"I'd argue," Hera says, her voice equal parts sad and fond, "that he didn't have those faculties to start with."

"You know what I mean."

"I should have my Omni on him, is what you're saying."

"It's not that you're less present for him otherwise, but most humans do respond better to a physical presence to go with a voice." Alana's reply to Hera's wry laugh is a smile of her own. Talking about people as if she herself weren't human is something Jacobi teases her about, but she's pretty sure Hera can relate. "And if anyone needs a little more attention right now, I'd say it's him."

"I... suppose that's true."

"I'm in the process of assembling another unit," Alana says, gesturing at a container of spare parts on the worktable, "if you think that's something you'd like."

"Oh." She'd briefly considered the possibility of another shell, but Hera ultimately decided that asking for one would be too demanding and burdensome, especially to someone who wasn't even officially part of crew. An offer from a _friend_ is an entirely different story. "Yes," she says, "absolutely."

"I was gonna have another one up and running for Vic," Alana says, smiling as she begins the process of printing the rest of the parts all over again, "but he doesn't have the experience to properly allocate his resources between three peripherals _and_ the rest of the ship, so it'll have to wait."

"What's the other peripheral?"

"The arm in the kitchen." Then, in a conspiratorial whisper: "Besides, it's funnier to see Jacobi and Kepler share custody."

"Oooh, Alana. You're devious."

* * *

Kepler's at the stove again when Jacobi wanders back onto the Sol with Minkowski and Eiffel in tow, their haul from Riemann's room distributed and stowed into all their requisite armories. Maxwell's on the couch, laptop open on its arm; Lovelace seated with her legs folded under her at the coffee table, dealing herself a round of Solitaire. Pryce lingers at the island counter, perusing a file. Vic immediately leaves Daniel's shoulder to rejoin Kepler, and Alana stands up to pull Eiffel aside, two OMNIS units drifting behind her.

"Gee," he comments to Maxwell when she comes back to the couch, lightly shoving his knees out of the way to retake her position, "how come Hera gets _two_ shells?"

Both of them look toward the stove, where Eiffel's decided that Kepler's company (of all people) might be the most preferable. He's not necessarily wrong; Minkowski and Lovelace still can't look at him without guilt and pity in their expressions, and Maxwell and Jacobi don't have nearly enough inquisitive patience to humor him. Pryce is busy with her own investigation, engrossed in whatever file Kepler had seen fit to show her. 

"I thought she should spend more time with Eiffel," Alana answers, "but I like having her around too. It's not too much of a strain to manage another Omni, is it?"

Hera bobs in place, coming to a rest on the back of the couch by Maxwell's head. "No," she says, "I'm doing just fine. If Vic needs any tips, I'd be happy to share with him."

"Can Vic?" asks Jacobi.

"Not yet."

"When?"

"Eventually." Maxwell glances at Jacobi, whose eyes are currently boring into the back of Eiffel's skull. Eiffel, who is innocently chopping onions while Kepler regales him (and Vic, and an unimpressed Hera) with a story about how he'd learned the recipe for this particular stew from a family in Chile. She pokes him gently in the ribs, mindful of his still-healing injuries, and murmurs into his ear, "Which one of them are you jealous of, Daniel?"

"What?" he says, tearing his eyes reluctantly away.

"Kepler or Invictus?"

"No."

"Hmm," Alana says. "Both?" 

" _No_."

"Eiffel?"

Lovelace cuts in, cheerfully smacking Jacobi's leg with her elbow as she shuffles her deck. " _Hey_. You two wanna quit gossiping and play a couple hands?"

Mouthing a silent _Thank you_ , Jacobi slips off the couch to join Lovelace on the floor, sitting with one knee pulled up to his chest and the other folded under him. "Yeah! That sounds... great." He musters enough enthusiasm to plaster on a smile, elbows resting on the surface of the table. "What're we playing, Captain? Maxwell, you in?"

"Pass."

"You know Spit?" asks Lovelace, dealing them both half the deck.

Jacobi swipes up the cards, stacking them neatly and reshuffling his hand. "I know Spit."

* * *

It's Eiffel's first ever taste of beef stew, a far cry from the bland, vacuum-sealed brussels sprouts and teriyaki chicken the Hephaestus (now Urania) crew has been subsisting on. "This is great," he says around a mouthful of tender braised chuck. "You cook a lot, Colonel?"

"Occasionally," Kepler says, folding his arms across the top of the island separating kitchen from living area. Jacobi and Maxwell usually had other projects to work on during their extended assignments and stakeouts, so he'd take on the responsibility of procuring food. Too many runs to local restaurants would make them more conspicuous than the occasional trip to the grocery store, but back in Canaveral, on most days Kepler finds himself eating breakfast, lunch _and_ dinner at the office. "But I _do_ know the Goddard cafeteria like the back of my hand." 

"Colonel," Eiffel says, but he cuts himself off when Kepler taps his shoulder to stop him.

"Ranks are a little redundant at this point, don't you think, Eiffel?"

"Does that mean," says Lovelace, sitting on Kepler's other side with a steaming, nearly overflowing bowl of her own, "we get to call you _Warren_?"

"Only if I get to call you _Isabel_."

She narrows his eyes at him, then glances toward Jacobi and Maxwell, who've set up with Pryce at the couch and coffee table. "I'll think about it." That level of familiarity with Kepler is simultaneously interesting and repulsive; he probably knows the exact reaction that would elicit from her, so she scoops up a spoonful of soup and takes a sip. "Maybe if we ever need a cover."

"Usually went by 'James' when I needed a cover," Kepler says, smiling mildly at the flash of interest in Lovelace's expression. Their differences aside, both of them have made it clear that they appreciate the other's resourcefulness and expertise. It's a tenuous truce, though certainly more solid than the cooperation he'd managed to wring from her on the Hephaestus. 

"Huh," she says, "I never thought about going by Sofia."

Kepler tilts his head, watching her carefully, the impish quirk of his lip staying long after the smile slips away. "I imagine air force work doesn't often require you to have a cover."

"Speaking of," Minkowski chimes in, momentarily pulled away from her own dinner, "are we gonna need codenames? Callsigns?" 

Lovelace smiles at her, sharp features mirroring Kepler's expression-- the one that says something _exciting_ might come to light about their crewmates and she's eager to find out exactly what it is. "I'm down to do a naming."

"Thematic ones are nice," Kepler suggests, marginally raising his voice. Jacobi and Maxwell are instinctively attuned to it after years as SI-5, snapping to attention the moment they register the change in volume. "Promotes cohesion. Off the top of my head... Maxwell: 'Sword'. Jacobi: 'Flame'."

There's a moment of confused silence while Jacobi and Maxwell exchange looks. Then Minkowski says, " _Oh,_ " and with her head in her hands, "I hate you _so_ much."

Kepler grins, teeth flashing. "Something wrong, 'Sentinel'?"

"Is this a reference to something?" Maxwell asks, her head dropping against the back of the couch. 

Eiffel's hand shoots into the air. "Me! I know this!" He misses the look Minkowski levels at Kepler, simultaneously frustrated that he might be the only other person on either ship who likes theater and impressed with the way he'd so easily given Eiffel an opportunity to feel less like an outsider. Especially when his own crew is still trying to reconcile him with the man they knew. "Les Mis, right? We were just talking about it."

A wink. "Got it in one, 'Rain'."

"So what's that make me?" Lovelace asks, her gaze also flickering briefly to Eiffel. 

"I think 'Tiger' suits you. 'Castle' for you, Dr. Pryce?"

"No complaints, Warren."

Minkowski scoffs. "That make you 'Thunder', Kepler?"

"Do you have any other suggestions?"

"There's always 'Lucifer'," Hera offers.

Lovelace shakes her head. "His ego's big enough already."

"Hera can be 'Star'," Doug says, turning to the shell floating near him and flashing Hera a fond smile. "That one's nice."

"How come I can't be Sword?" Jacobi asks, his tone a clear indicator that he's weighing the merits of complaining just for the sake of complaining. Minkowski and Lovelace inhale, eyes already rolling to the ceiling. 

"Do you like it better than Flame?" Kepler asks, infinitely patient. The kind of infinite patience that would suffocate someone in their sleep. 

"Nope," Jacobi says, flashing him a grin. Lovelace and Minkowski would usually ignore him and let him carry on-- much less of a challenge than something to push against, a boundary to explore, nerves to touch. Kepler never let him push _too_ far, but Daniel finds himself relaxing into the dynamic.

"That's why." Kepler shrugs. "Also, it was just a suggestion. Don't anyone feel obligated to take it. You could all be Papa Smurf for all I care."

"No," Minkowski begrudgingly tells him, "I like these."

"Thought you would." Kepler looks around the table, his gaze catching and holding Minkowski's just a second longer than necessary. _See how quickly we got that done?_ the look says. _I'm about to become your most valuable asset._ "Provisional callsigns are decided. There's plenty of time for you all to come up with better ones." 

"Wait, Kepler," Eiffel says, waiting on an inquisitive look to continue, "you were actual military, right?"

"I've been in a few militaries," he says, "sure." Most of them don't properly count, embeds lasting only weeks at a time with units all over the world as a Goddard rep. Sales & Consulting was the last department he'd been a part of before Strategic Intelligence; it'd been a fun few years.

"And Captain? Commander?"

"Air Force," Lovelace confirms for both of them.

"What were your callsigns?"

"Outlaw," says Isabel. "The guys read somewhere that Lovelace came from 'lawless'. So, outlaw."

Minkowski smiles. "Ursa. My first commander called me Mama Bear, but the unit decided on Ursa."

" _Cool._ "

Kepler regards Eiffel next. "If I remember correctly," he says, more to give the polite impression of _not_ having memorized everything about everyone on the Hephaestus, "yours was 'Walkman'."

"Couldn't tell you, sir, but I kinda like it." 

"Colonel," Maxwell calls from the living room, "what was yours? Your first one."

Kepler exhales. The question is totally deliberate; she'd read his file and there's no point hiding it from the rest of the crew. The look he gives her silently promises retribution and then there's an anticipatory deadness in his eyes that only Lovelace catches, and he says in a perfect monotone: "Puff."

Minkowski clears her throat, carefully watching his face. "Can I ask--"

"No."

From the couch, Jacobi gasps. "Holy sh-- was it because of the tattoo?" He makes eye contact with Kepler, meeting a cool stare with a devious grin of his own. "Puff... the Magic Dragon?"

All hell breaks loose. 

Kepler weathers the storm of questions in long-suffering silence, both about the callsign and the now-removed tattoo in question. Pilots have no respect for FNGs, much less the kid with a full back tattoo and a chip on his shoulder. He lets them carry on just long enough to get the overwhelming curiosity out of their systems and to realize that they won't be getting any answers from him. "Alright," he says at last, a soft growl in his voice just to emphasize the end of his patience, "that's _enough_."

Eiffel's the one who breaks the silence, a friendly, cajoling inflection to his voice as he tugs lightly on Kepler's sleeve. "Can we _please_ ," he says, "use your old callsigns?"

"No. Nothing tracing back to any of our identities, including old nicknames or aliases."

Lovelace snorts. "Awfully convenient for you, Puff."

"I got upgraded to 'Kelvin' after six months, actually."

"As in?"

"Zero degrees." They all know there are two ways to get a nickname changed: doing something stupider than whatever got your first one assigned and doing something heroic enough to warrant a nominal promotion. Kepler allows them all a few moments to think about what show of terrifying, cold-hearted competence he'd demonstrated to be assigned that nickname before he throws them a friendly bone. "Some of the guys I came up with still use the old one, but one of them's 'Bull', so I let it slide."

"Bull?" asks Maxwell, brows rising. The concept alone of Kepler having a history before Director of SI-5 at Goddard Futuristics is hard enough to process, much less Kepler having friends and acquaintances outside the company. 

"Lieutenant Stefan 'Bull' Schitt."

"Ugh," Minkowski scoffs, "typical."


	11. Chapter 11

Minkowski joins Kepler at the sink after they've cleared away the dishes, the colonel too disciplined to leave unwashed bowls and utensils in the sink but no longer in a position to order anyone else to do them. Lovelace had volunteered too, both of them _polite guests_ despite the nature of their host, but the sink area isn't large and Kepler, in all his micromanaging neuroses, had insisted on doing the scrubbing.

They're nearly done when Kepler passes Minkowski a soapy plate and washes his hands. He looks at her, focuses his sharp, attentive eyes on her and asks, "Have you heard 'Hamilton' yet, Commander?"

"It was still in development when I went up to the Hephaestus." Renée rinses the plate, places it on the drying rack, and turns to him, wary. "I'd been hearing buzz about it for months, though. 'In the Heights' was one of my favorites."

"Heights?" Kepler asks, only looking a little surprised, a little pleased. "Not Fiddler?"

She wonders if Kepler knows that a small part in a high school production of Fiddler on the Roof was what had lit her interest in theater-- the question is almost too pointed to be a coincidence, but that detail about her life is almost entirely inconsequential. Would seem to be totally irrelevant to Goddard researchers. Then again, she wouldn't put it past them.

"Well, it's not like I can't relate to the immigrant experience." Minkowski shakes her head, smiling softly. "I like Fiddler, but it... resonated more with my parents than me."

Kepler says nothing, watching her with a curious, sympathetic look on his face. Renée considers that having a tall, (unfortunately) handsome man hanging onto her every word would be more effective if she hadn't known him on the Hephaestus, acutely aware of the total bastard hidden behind a facsimile of genuine interest. It's no wonder Kepler was Cutter's top man: he puts on a very convincing act. 

"I always wanted to go to space," Minkowski continues, not _totally_ immune to an offer of conversation about something _other_ than space, memories, violence, or revenge, "but that was the first time I realized that maybe there was something else I could really enjoy doing."

"I found an early-access copy of the Hamilton soundtrack on the Sol," Kepler says, finally, "if you'd like to give it a listen. Cutter might've had a stake in the production."

Minkowski steps into his space, drawing herself upright. Kepler's still significantly taller than her, but he doesn't lean away, only waits patiently on her reply. "Whatever your game is," Renée hisses, "I'm not falling for it."

"No game." He puts both hands up, palms forward. "Music's not a _finite resource_ , and it costs me nothing to make you a copy."

"There's definitely still a game."

"Well, no one else on either of these ships knows anything about Broadway. Even Lovelace." A frown. As if Lovelace's lack of interest in musical theater was a personal slight against him, although Minkowski _does_ find herself agreeing with the sentiment that it's a shame someone from _New York_ never took an interest in Broadway. "But," Kepler amends after a second, his eyes flickering to the living area where Maxwell's briefing Doug on the rules of Texas Hold'em, "I'm also thinking Eiffel might like a quick primer on American history in musical form."

" _You_ like Broadway musicals?" she retorts, but already knows that as unlikely as it seems, Kepler _did_ just talk the entire crew into choosing callsigns straight out of Les Miserables. And he _does_ have an uncommonly strong flair for drama.

"I like a bit of everything. Musicals are a great conversation starter." At her skeptical look, he sighs. "Haven't you ever had to make small-talk, Minkowski? Don't you find it _mind-numbingly_ tedious?"

" _God, yes._ "

"Well, when it's the majority of your job description, you start finding things to talk about other than the _weather_."

"I," says Renée, a slow grin spreading across her face, "can't wait to tell Lovelace that you're a theater nerd."

"I'm honestly surprised that that's all it takes to get in your good graces, Commander." 

"Are you still out to kill us all?" 

"I'd argue that I never was." He grimaces, an expression that speaks to too much experience in this particular scenario. "Killing everyone is... messy."

If he meant that to be reassuring, it doesn't work. Mostly, it reminds her of the moment right before Cutter arrived, when he said straight out that the only way they might live is if keeping them alive would be less of a hassle than killing them all. "You faked all our deaths back on Earth," Minkowski deadpans.

"Goddard never _planned_ for you all to get back alive, but a miraculous recovery of the crew from a remote tropical island? That can be spun." Ten years ago, killing everyone and the subsequent cleanup would've been a small speedbump; more recently, Warren prefers to resolve situations civilly; with class and skill. No need to break whole people if their spirits are properly broken first. "Barring that, if you'd all proven yourselves to be indispensable, I would've made room on my team. On the record, none of us... are strictly alive."

"Even you? Maxwell? Jacobi?"

"Even me, Maxwell and Jacobi."

Minkowski exhales heavily, discomfited by the idea that their only _real_ difference was in how _okay_ with Goddard's messed up policies they were. It's not a ringing statement of confidence, but it does put them on level playing ground. "Then I'm not gonna complain about having you on our side, especially if it gets me access to Broadway musicals." She pokes him in the chest, making a face when her finger meets hard resistance against the muscle underneath his shirt. "Don't think I trust you, but Lovelace says we can work together, and I trust _her_."

"Here," he murmurs, pulling a flash drive from a pocket and slipping it into her hand, "enjoy. I did."

"Thanks."

"There's also," he says slowly, "a rundown of the supplies I can make available to you and Captain Lovelace back on Earth. No names or exact locations, but if you see something that might be of use, I'll make it happen."

Brows furrowing in confusion, Minkowski looks at the drive in her hand like it's a venomous spider. "What... kind of supplies are we talking here?"

"I was getting paid more than I knew how to spend, so I stockpiled contingencies." A shrug. Kepler flashes her a self-effacing smile. "Safehouses, weapon caches, vehicles, and burners... You know, _These are a few of my favorite things_?"

Even recognizing it for the blatant manipulation tactic it is, Minkowski chuckles at the reference. He makes them too smoothly for it to be mocking, yet another subject in his encyclopedia of eclectic interests to dig out when he's got a new mark to soften up. "It sounds kind of like you might have been planning an insurrection of your own," Renée points out. 

"Kind of does, doesn't it?" He laughs, shaking his head. _No. No insurrections._ "Cutter had plenty of off-the-books work he needed me to do, so I set these up to avoid a paper trail back to the company."

"Wait, are you saying Cutter knew about them? Does anyone else?"

"As far as I know, _only_ Cutter knew about them, and no specific details." He'd been granted a lot of trust, every last ounce of it painstakingly earned. The freedom that came with it was downright intoxicating, and it had _worked_ to keep him in line, just like it worked on his own team. In hindsight, that had come back to bite all of them. "Plausible deniability."

"This is... a lot."

"You folks had no idea what kind of company Goddard was when you went up to the Hephaestus, and I imagine a couple of ghosts won't have much to their names upon arriving back on Earth." Kepler levels his sharp, calculating eyes on her and cants his head. "If you'd rather find a place to settle down and move on, don't feel obligated to jump in on this operation. Use whatever you like to get that done. It's in my best interests to set y'all up for success, whatever you decide to do."

"How's that?"

"Any of you being made would blow my cover, too." 

Minkowski can't find it in herself to be surprised or angry that even a supposed act of generosity was only offered to get them out of his way. At this point, she would've been more suspicious if he'd pretended otherwise. "But... why? After everything you did to us? Everything _we_ did to _you_?"

"I probably wouldn't be here at all if your crew hadn't done what you did," Kepler says, visibly preparing to rejoin the crew at the table for a few rounds of poker, "so consider us even."

"Is this," Minkowski blurts out before he can turn away, "how Cutter felt _all the time_?"

"How do you mean?"

"Like he'd just, say or imply he wanted something, and you walk up and hand it to him on a silver platter? Sometimes even before he realizes he needs it?"

"I've been working under him for a _very_ long time," Kepler says, voice dry.

"And you don't argue," Minkowski asks, totally flabbergasted with both hands clasped around the drive she'd been so suspicious of not two minutes earlier, "or complain, or mess it up spectacularly?" 

Warren considers that this could be the first time in her professional life that someone had sussed out her intentions and taken action to set them in motion before she'd even uttered a word, promising both airtight execution and a deadly, efficient competence. Considering the crew she was given for the Hephaestus mission, it wouldn't surprise him. "Spectacular failures occasionally happen," he reminds her with a pointed look, "but for the most part, yeah."

"Thank you, Colonel." She tucks the drive in her pocket and extends her hand, eyes bright with emotion. "I mean that sincerely." 

Warren takes the proffered hand and pumps it once, politely, trying not to laugh. "Don't mention it."

* * *

Jacobi goes bust after an hour and a half, patting Maxwell on the shoulder as she distributes the pot between Kepler and herself. She's keeping score on her tablet, set in the center of the table right beside the board so each player can enter their bets themselves. Alana and Hera had programmed the interface on the spot, using crude (but effective) cartoon chips to represent each player's stack. 

Lovelace is the last of the Urania crew still in the game, facing down Kepler and Maxwell while her chips dwindle. 

"You lasted a pretty long time," Minkowski comments as Jacobi joins her by the porthole, nursing a lukewarm pouch of ginger ale. "Honestly thought you might make it to the end."

"Got bored," he says, flashing her a crooked smile. "Besides, Kepler and Maxwell are both counting cards and I'm _not_ getting between them."

"SI-5, cheating? _Shocker_." Renée rolls her eyes, tipping her own packet of Dr. Pepper toward Jacobi. They toast, then both take a sip. "Thought they'd have wrapped things up a bit faster if they were counting," she says.

"Hold'em is a little different from Blackjack. You can guess what card is coming up next, but you still don't know who's got what." Jacobi looks away from his teammates, meeting Minkowski's raised brows with a resigned nod. "Yeah, they've talked about this. _At length_."

They lapse into a comfortable silence, Jacobi turning his eyes to the porthole. At superliminal speeds even light from nearby stars can't catch up to them, and Jacobi's not appreciating the view so much as contemplating the sheer nothingness sitting less than an inch away. It's just force of habit that has him idly calculating the strength of the explosion needed to compromise the ship's hull, both an intellectual exercise for himself and a precaution for when they drop back into the next sublight arc.

"Jacobi," Minkowski says, deciding that he looks much more thoughtful than the situation warrants, "weren't you in the Air Force too?"

"I wasn't a flyboy or anything," he answers absently, "but I did do some ballistics work with the USAF."

"Did you have a callsign? I know a couple units gave one to everyone they ever had drinks with."

Jacobi can actually, for real, feel his blood turn to ice. Minkowski probably noticed that Kepler skipped over him when everyone else was dredging up their old callsigns and assumed it was some sort of dig at him instead of one of the colonel's careful, roundabout kindnesses. The kind that's so subtle you'd miss it if you haven't known him for as long as Jacobi has. "Yeah," he says, resigning himself to this conversation, "but I don't think anyone'd be alright with me still using it."

"What do you mean?"

"You uh, remember in '09?" Seven years is a long time, but considering the scope of that disaster, he doesn't doubt that Minkowski has at least an inkling of it. "Ohio, there was... an _incident_ with an experimental missile."

"Oh."

"Yeah, that was... that was me." He nods a few times, matter-of-fact. _You know how it is._ "I don't use that callsign anymore."

"Jesus, I'm sorry."

"It was a long time ago."

Minkowski puts her hand on his shoulder and doesn't pull away when he goes still, torn between shaking her off and leaning into it. Classic dilemma of the perpetually touch-starved black ops agents of the SI-5. "That's how you ended up with Kepler?"

"Yep, no chance of honest work in _any_ sector, public or private. I was two years out from that day when he recruited me." He's not even drunk, but Minkowski's listening closely, sympathetic rather than disgusted the way most USAF personnel would be, so Jacobi keeps talking. "Found out afterwards everyone-- and I mean Cutter, Young, _everyone_ \-- told him I was a bad idea, but he still wanted me."

"I didn't know."

"Yeah." Jacobi sneaks a look at Kepler, who's frowning at the board as Maxwell deals the flop. Must've lost his lead. "So I can't hang him out to dry, even if I want to sometimes."

"How do you know he just couldn't find anyone better?" Minkowski asks, deciding against softening the blow in favor of getting it over with quickly. 

"Because he got Maxwell," Jacobi says, easily mustering the pride for her that for a long time, he couldn't for himself. It had been clear that Alana was the best-- so patient, so ambitious, terrifyingly adaptable. It was only after meeting her that Kepler's insistence that he only worked with the best held enough weight for Jacobi to believe it applied to himself, too. "Alana's the smartest person I've _ever_ met. If he can get Maxwell, he can get any ballistics specialist he wants."

"And he picked you."

"Little ol' me."

"Jacobi..."

He huffs, crossing his arms in front of his chest as Minkowski releases his shoulder. "I'm not crazy enough to think he's gonna be any different, but that's my _team_."

"I know what that's like," Minkowski tells him, offering a smile. She had, after all, considered Hilbert a member of her crew. "As long as you know what you're doing."

* * *

The moment Minkowski and company return to the Urania, Maxwell retires to her room. They didn't leave much of a mess, all trash disposed of in their proper receptacles, but Kepler makes his rounds through the living area anyway, straightening cushions and discarding overlooked bits of plastic from their drink pouches. He settles at the couch last, gathering up the cards and shuffling them one last time before returning them to their box. 

Daniel had helped, kind of-- but Kepler had been picking up on details that had escaped his own notice, and he's not about to suggest that the man has straight up OCD when it comes to his inhabited spaces, insisting on predictability and control. Their assignments so easily go pear-shaped; a therapist might suggest that Kepler's need for organization is some sort of defense mechanism if he were ever inclined to see one. But it hadn't affected his work, so Kepler stubbornly shuffled it into his 'not a problem' pile and ignored it. 

Jacobi's perched on the arm of the couch, watching the colonel rearrange the table, shuffling a stack of paper to one corner and setting the cards on top, directly in the center, as a paperweight. "If you want something from me," Kepler says, without glancing up, "you're gonna have to _say so_ , Mr. Jacobi."

"Like you do?" Jacobi retorts, trying to keep his tone light, but at Kepler's look he knows he hadn't succeeded. 

"I think I've been clear about everything I've ever needed from you," he answers, carefully dragging the coffee table back to its proper place after it'd been shifted to accommodate their game. "How you chose to make it happen was always your decision." 

"Yeah, well, I needed help." Daniel rubs the pad of his thumb across the bridge of his nose, smoothing over an imprint left from too many hours, days, months, with a pair of safety goggles on. "I needed _your_ help. I needed you to _care_ for two seconds about your _friend_."

"And you could've come to me." Kepler's still preoccupied with making sure each corner of the table is the same distance away from the couch, but his brows furrow, voice losing its obnoxious confidence and shifting gears into a low, sly cadence. "You could've knocked on my door. 'Colonel, I haven't slept in days, I can't be sure I'm me.' I would've given you the documentation, I even had it _prepared_." Finally satisfied with the table, he looks up, straightens and slings one arm over the back of the couch. "You know, _Lovelace_ came to speak to me about it." 

"I shouldn't," Daniel mumbles through clenched teeth, "have had to ask."

"Did you talk to Maxwell? Did you put it in a _report_?" They're not entirely rhetorical questions. His tone certainly leaves open the possibility of Kepler having missed the signs, but Jacobi frowns and looks away, down at the hands he clasps in his lap. "Did you," Kepler continues, (correctly) reading Jacobi's response as an admission, "at any time, in any one of a _thousand ways_ , explicitly tell me that it was an issue?" 

"What," Daniel spits, and he tenses as the shape of Kepler in his periphery stands, "and have _you_ tell _me_ to get over it?"

Kepler comes to a stop in front of him, standing with his back straight. "Jacobi," he says, " _look_ at me." 

Years of responding instantly, blindly, unquestioningly to that tone has Jacobi's head snapping up to lock eyes with Kepler. 

"When," he says softly, a twitching muscle in his jaw the only indicator of his mood, "have I _ever_ denied you access to a resource that I thought I could give you?" 

The phrasing is deliberate. Jacobi doesn't give him an answer, frozen in place under Kepler's probing stare.

"You say, 'I need more polyisobutylene,' and I _get you_ more polyisobutylene. You say 'I need to know I'm not an alien,' I'll make sure that you do." He says it like it's the most obvious thing in the world, as if reassuring Jacobi of his humanity is exactly the same as ordering him a barrel of chemicals, as if the needs can and should be requisitioned in the exact same way. Maybe for him, it would be. "What I _won't_ do is assume you need me to _baby you_ through every unexpected incident that happens in space, so excuse me for believing in your capacity to be a professional!"

"How could _anyone_ not be affected?! What if _you_ ran into a copy of yourself and then you heard it _die miserably_ outside the airlock? Wouldn't you have a _problem_ with that?" Jacobi chews on the inside of his cheek, eyes on Kepler's neutral, patient expression. There's a moment where he genuinely seems to be considering the scenario but nothing flashes across his face-- no glimpse of fear or pain to break up the indifference, the _Am I supposed to?_ evident in the incredulous furrow of his brows. "It really wouldn't've been a problem for you," Jacobi realizes after a long silence, suddenly exhausted.

"Is that really," says Kepler, "the conversation you want to be having right now? With me?"

With an honest-to-God, fully confirmed alien clone of his ex-boss? "No. It's not."

"But for what it's worth, it really wouldn't have bothered me all that much." He'd been more upset that Lovelace let a version of Jacobi die out in space than at the prospect of being a duplicate himself. Warren is pretty sure that if he were to meet a duplicate of himself (or rather, the original of himself), they'd be _friends_. "I didn't get where I am by doubting myself." 

Jacobi drags his hands down his face. "And I bet you felt _nothing_ when you got thrown out of the airlock, 'cause God forbid you have a normal human reaction to something."

"Why waste my final moments panicking," Kepler says matter-of-factly, "when I could spend them drinking a thirty-year-old single malt scotch? It's damn good stuff, Jacobi."

"And Maxwell?" 

"When I saw an opportunity to _unshoot_ her, didn't I take it?"

"You barely even reacted. You were-- you were _shocked_ that I wasn't over her dying." Jacobi looks up and he must sound _really_ pathetic, because Kepler's expression softens, some internal switch flipping from 'who cares?' to 'oh, Jacobi cares'. "I know that's what you were supposed to say," Daniel mumbles, looking away, "but I couldn't even think straight and you just... like it was _easy_." 

"What I experience," Kepler says, slowly now, "and what I choose to express aren't for anyone but me to decide. She wasn't nothing to me, and she knows it. Dr. Maxwell will decide for herself what she wants out of me, and I'd think you respected her enough to let her."

Jacobi searches Kepler's eyes, the stormy depths of them hiding any hint of remorse. But he didn't imagine the tightness in the colonel's voice, the implication that he'd compartmentalized his grief, his rage and his pain because to do otherwise would've gotten both of them-- all of them-- killed. Of course Minkowski wasn't acting sensibly. She'd killed Maxwell over _Hilbert_ of all people, she'd heard Lovelace shot in the head, Kepler had no reason to believe she'd bluff about dropping the whole station into the star. Then he'd lost his hand.

So many months out from that day, with Maxwell safe onboard and Kepler in front of him, Jacobi can even recognize that he's been with the SI-5 too long, that Kepler's Black Ops Looney Tunes mind had started to make some twisted, undeniable sense in the last three days. Things had, after all, fallen into place. "So," Jacobi says, choking on the words, "you were right all along. Everything worked out exactly the way you planned."

"Daniel," Kepler murmurs, gently.

"Yeah?"

He drops the deliberate slowness in his speech, the change jarring Jacobi completely out of the mental vortex he was about to entrench himself in. "That's just about the stupidest goddamn thing I've ever heard you say." 

"Wh--"

"All of this? It's uncharted territory." Kepler fights back a laugh, his voice hitching before he brings it under control, and he flashes a toothy grin at Jacobi. "The chance that things would've turned out this way was so _infinitesimally small_ that it wasn't even worth considering when I shot Young. I was _convinced_ that Cutter and Pryce were gonna succeed, regardless of my interference, and that you were all going to, how'd you put it? _Die miserably_. I didn't expect to come back, much less have the opportunity to bring Maxwell with me. No, Jacobi, this was _not_ according to plan."

Daniel frowns. Only one man could so cheerfully take a sledgehammer to his own pedestal. "But you-- what?!" 

He shrugs, all brutal indifference. "Plans go off the rails all the time. Sometimes they go off in a way that's beyond my wildest imagination. Didn't God's plan fail so badly that he decided it was better to _delete humanity_ than to try and fix it? Twice?" He starts to laugh, one hand fisting into Jacobi's collar, at the scruff of his neck, and shaking him. "Me? I can adapt." A pause, wherein Jacobi finds himself grinning along, rolling his eyes at the casual near-blasphemy. "But," Warren adds, softly now, "I'm aware that 'need-to-know' isn't gonna cut it in this scenario, so I've got all my cards on the table." 

"Nah," Jacobi scoffs, but looking at Kepler's face, he can't read anything in it other than the easy smile. "No way."

During their years together, Jacobi has seen him pass for everything from a college freshman to a corporate retiree and everything in between. Kepler rarely looks his actual age-- he's lucky enough to have a face that can reflect just about any level of maturity depending on how he's decided to grow or shave his stubble, how he styles his hair, how he dresses, how he walks and talks. Right now he looks young in a way that Jacobi has seen before, a mischievous quirk to his brows and a wicked flash of teeth. 

Kepler lets him go, taking a moment to straighten Jacobi's flight suit on his shoulders before he removes his hand entirely. "Appreciate that all this is as new to me as it is to you, Jacobi." 

"Yeah," Daniel murmurs. There's a lightness to Kepler's tone that's new, different from his usual manic focus, expansive and warm. He's standing at a precipice, staring down into a yawning chasm of uncertainty-- and _excited_ to leap in. "Yeah," Jacobi says again, louder, "alright."

"Alright?"

"You already know what cards I've got, but they're on the table too." He slides off the arm of the couch, sticks out his hand, palm open. "If your team's still got space for me, I'm all in." 

Kepler doesn't move to take it, eyes not straying from Daniel's face. "It does," he says. "But I meant what I said earlier: you can do _anything_ you want. I set you up with the skills to disappear, start a new life, and lie your way into whatever career you could want. Why would you pick this again?"

"I want to make things right." Jacobi prepares for contempt to cross Kepler's expression but it doesn't come, his face still. "For the longest time, I was convinced that Goddard was the way to do it, and maybe we weren't wrong about that. But I know what you're getting into, and I'm not running away just 'cause it's _scary_ or _hard_." The fingers of Jacobi's extended hand curl into a loose fist and he steps in close, knocking twice on Kepler's chest like it's a door that'll open if he waits in front of it long enough. "You try to act all heartless, but you never gave up on me and Maxwell, so. We're a team. You're not getting rid of me that easy."

Kepler catches his wrist, warm palm curling gently around small, delicate bones as Jacobi opens his fist. "Thou hast me," Kepler murmurs, clasping the hand with his prosthetic, "if thou hast me, at the worst." And then he pulls Jacobi in, wrapping his free arm over his shoulder and pounding him twice on the back, leaving his hand between his shoulder blades. It's probably the closest Kepler's ever allowed without one of them in need of some serious medical attention, and he lets Jacobi press his forehead into the hollow between his collar and his neck. "And thou shalt wear me," Kepler whispers by his ear, "if thou wear me, better... and better."

"I'm gonna have Vic look that up," Jacobi tells him as they simultaneously let go and step away. "It's good to have you back, sir."

"Likewise, Mr. Jacobi."

"Why'd you stop, before?" Daniel asks before Kepler can dismiss him. Not in an official capacity-- they don't do that anymore-- but it doesn't mean he can't still recognize the disengage, that polite withdrawal of interest. In some ways, he actually prefers the explicit shutdown. 

"Stop what?"

"The theatrics. I always thought it was kinda cool," he admits, grinning at Kepler's surprised look. "I mean, it makes you a giant nerd, but it's pretty cool."

He gets a tired half-shrug in response. "Sniper check."

"What?"

"Never mind." And there's the dismissal. "Go get some sleep."


	12. Chapter 12

Alana's in her room when he knocks on the door, two loud raps the only warning she gets before Jacobi lets himself into her quarters. "What's a sniper check?" he says, not even bothering to greet her as he saunters inside and flops onto her bed. She's already at work on a new navigational interface for the Omnis.

"What's a-- oh." Maxwell gives him a thoughtful look, recalling the straight up _sniper training_ she'd gone through after Kepler managed to get her transferred into SI-5. She'd agreed on the promise that she'd have complete autonomy to drift in and out of whatever department's got her interest at any given time, no limits on what she might choose to pursue. "It's when you salute an officer in a combat zone," she tells him. "Snipers are trained to take out key personnel, so if you salute someone, you're setting them up to get shot in the head. Why? What did Kepler say to you?"

"No, he-- why do you always think it has to do with him?!"

Jacobi only ever liked ballistics R&D, but Maxwell's tried her hand at everything from astrophysics to AI development to the experimental haptic communications department. Weeks of intensive training with then-Major Kepler were almost worth it for the frankly inadvisable amount of freedom she'd gotten in return. And that intensive training had given her a better read on Jacobi-and-Kepler than she ever really wanted. "Doesn't it?" she asks. The things non-Kepler people say to him are rarely worth further consideration.

"He used to quote a lot of Shakespeare," Daniel sighs, not even attempting to argue, "but he stopped a couple years back. Picked it up again recently. I asked why and all he said was 'sniper check'."

"Did he do it to anyone else?"

"Nah. It was before you joined the team."

"Oh." She gives him a look, a little disappointed one, like he should be able to figure it out for himself. "He stopped so you wouldn't become a target."

" _Whose_ target? Wait, don't answer that. Stupid question." There's really only one man Kepler couldn't Handle in his own terrifying, efficient way. "Okay, no, why would _I_ be a target?"

"Because of his blatant favoritism?"

"I think we both know _you're_ the favorite," he argues. Maxwell had always been one of the operatives considered Valuable to the company even outside of Kepler's preference for her on his team. Cutter favored her, too, doubtlessly seeing shades of his favorite director of Strategic Intelligence in her cool professionalism and clear-eyed ambition. Jacobi, on the other hand, regularly straddled the line between 'asset' and 'liability', often remaining on the right side of it only on Kepler's good word.

"No," Maxwell scoffs. "Haha, nooooo."

"Uh, he's always talking about how _smart_ and _professional_ you are. He lets you have your own room, and he's always dropping stuff off for you in the lab. It's pretty obvious."

"He says the same things about you whenever you're out of earshot. And sometimes to your face." Her eyes narrow. "You never wonder why he always takes us out on your anniversary? Which, by the way, he doesn't celebrate with anyone else?"

"'Cause I gave him grief about it the first time it came around?" Jacobi suggests, but even hearing it he knows that's wrong. Kepler'd had the fireworks prepared, had spent that first anniversary stakeout trying to work out how much it mattered, and for the next five years after that, didn't ever forget it. 

"Look, we both know he's an emotionless, bureaucratic monster." Maxwell says it patiently, almost affectionately, like Kepler's a rattlesnake she regularly has to handle, but whose habits she knows and understands. "He doesn't do anything for anyone without making sure they know they owe him." 

"Yeah. Obviously."

"When he bails us out of a situation, you think that's him caring but it's not. That's just the bare minimum of being a good commander, and whatever else we can say about him, Kepler's a great commander." Maxwell doesn't respond to his wince. One of the few things the colonel consistently did, that Jacobi had read as a token of his regard, was _come back for them_. Once or twice, he'd done it even before securing his objective. Other times, he's a steady voice in their ears. _Got your back, Mr. Jacobi_ , and _Do what you have to, Dr. Maxwell, don't worry about me_. "But he knows you care about That Day. The Twenty-Fourth. So he makes sure that you never spend it alone, even if he has to fake a stakeout to do it." 

Her words make it pretty clear that if Jacobi's used to being abandoned by his commanding officers, it's because he's had really bad ones. But Kepler knows when he has the hardest time getting through a day, has him so busy that he forgets to drown his sorrows in a bottle of icy booze whenever that time of year rolls back around. He usually pulls them to some beautiful foreign locale, puts them on a brutal schedule, and wraps up with a team dinner at the fanciest restaurant in town on company dime, insisting that they deserve some luxury after a punishing rotation. If there's a cheese sampler, he always orders one. 

Maxwell doesn't _hate_ the ritual, but she infinitely prefers the small bottle of very expensive scotch he drops off at her desk without comment every year. No need to be in public, less time away from her computers. They really should be a lot more wary of how well he knows them. "If that's not blatant favoritism," Alana says, victorious and gloating at the stunned look on Jacobi's face, "I don't know what is."

"You two," Jacobi sighs, rolling to his feet and stalking to her door to return to his room, "have a weird definition of 'blatant' and 'favoritism'."

* * *

Lovelace and Kepler are shoulder to shoulder at the kitchen island when Jacobi finally stumbles out of bed and into the canteen for breakfast the next morning. They're both snacking out of the same bowl of granola between them, bent over a thick spread of papers marked up in blue and red. Reaching the end of one, Kepler leans back in his seat, scrubbing at his eyes. They had to have been at work for several hours already, shift rotations a courtesy more than necessity at superliminal speeds; any structural failure at this juncture of their trip back to Earth would be catastrophic no matter who was awake.

"Colonel," Jacobi says, taking the lull in activity to catch his eye as he spins his seat around, meeting his relaxed expression with an innocent, wide-eyed look of his own, "Maxwell says I'm your favorite."

Lovelace slowly, deliberately, reaches for a handful of granola, a grin spreading across her face at the sight of Kepler's heretofore easy smile melting away. If he'd been looking for a simple morning spent plotting corporate espionage, clearly his plans have just gone off the rails.

Maxwell makes a disbelieving sound from her place on the couch, shooting Daniel a fierce glare. "Jacobi says _I'm_ your favorite. He's wrong, though."

"She doesn't know what she's talking about," scoffs Jacobi, "you let her get away with _everything_."

"You take Daniel on _every_ assignment," Maxwell counters, her volume rising, "it's clear that you like him better! You can tell me, sir, I won't take it personally like he would."

"I," Warren says, taking his time to make eye contact with both of them while Lovelace shovels granola into her mouth, "appreciate both of you equally."

"Sir," says Maxwell at the same time Jacobi protests with, "That's not an answer!"

" _Both of you_ ," Kepler snaps, his pitch dropping to a low, harsh growl, "shut up." 

They do. Instantly, and without question. 

"Jacobi," Warren says, voice soft, smooth again, like silk sliding across skin, "I trust your skill and dedication with absolutely no conditions. Your _unparalleled_ expertise with explosives is indispensable to the team, and I couldn't ask for more from an operative. _Get it together._ " 

_Told you_ , Maxwell mouths at him, but she immediately lapses back into an expression of attentive innocence when Kepler turns his eyes on her.

"Maxwell," he says, somewhat less gently than he had to Jacobi, "you are one of the smartest people I know. The things you make possible are beyond belief, and it is a pleasure and an honor to work with you. I think you're _smart enough_ to figure out how two people can be different and _equally important_. So if you two would like to end this juvenile _spat_ , I've got inventories to look over and I'm gonna need requisition forms from both of you." He takes two folders from under a small mound of forms and holds them up. "Now."

"But--"

"Sir--"

" _Did I stutter?_ "

Maxwell pushes herself off the couch and approaches to take one of the folders. "On it," she says, "Colonel."

Jacobi steps forward and accepts the one Kepler slaps into his hand. "Yes, sir."

"Wow," says Lovelace, throwing a pistachio at Kepler's head once Jacobi and Maxwell both retreat to Maxwell's room, "nice job sorting them out, dad."

"Here," he says absently, handing another folder to her, "one for you, too. Minkowski made sure you got my list?" He kicks his foot up on the crossbar under Lovelace's stool, using the leverage to turn his own seat back toward the counter.

Lovelace cracks it open. "Yep. You could've just given it to me yourself."

"Well, I wanted to smooth things over with her."

"She is pretty impressed."

Kepler rolls his shoulders, his neck, stretching the tight clusters of muscle until they loosen. The gesture reminds Isabel to do the same, groaning as the vertebrae all down her spine turn and pop. It's not something she'd do in front of subordinates and she has the distinct impression that whatever they're calling their relationship now, Kepler wouldn't be doing it in front of his, either. "Any word on what she's planning to do?" he asks, blinking slowly at her while he straightens his back and shakes his head to clear it. His foot is still on her chair.

"Trying to talk her into hunkering down somewhere with Eiffel, Hera and Pryce until it all blows over." Lovelace frowns. "She's not biting."

"It _would_ be the smart thing," he says of Lovelace's logic. "SI-5's keeping Pryce, though."

"Wait, really?"

Kepler instantly picks up the tension in Lovelace's expression, both of them bracing for a fight over who should be responsible for Pryce's wellbeing. Part of him is sure that she simply doesn't trust him with _anyone_ 's safety and health, much less a woman whose memories had been erased, and the rest knows that the Hephaestus crew could sorely use an AI specialist, especially considering the conditions that Hera would be subject to on Earth. He wouldn't stop Maxwell if she decided to stay with them, but he's pretty sure she'd never voluntarily choose the Hephaestus crew over SI-5. "She's got a lot of work to do with Maxwell," he reasons before Lovelace can argue, "and I imagine Hera wouldn't want her around. Maxwell wouldn't abandon Hera, if that's what you're worried about." 

Mulling that over, Lovelace eventually nods. "Yeah," she concedes, "that's true. Those little Omni guys might mean that Hera can be around your team too. Any idea whether or not they'll work off the ship? Even if they can't float."

"There's always the internet," he points out. "Cloud computing _is_ all the rage lately."

"Oh. Wow, that's a lot to think about."

"I'm letting Doctors Maxwell and Pryce work on that," Kepler says. "Hera will probably need a crash course on computer viruses, though. Don't get many of those in deep space."

Lovelace hums in a brief acknowledgment, propping her chin on one hand and regarding Kepler through narrowed, thoughtful eyes. "Imagine showing her how to run Norton," Isabel says.

"No one uses Norton anymore," he drawls, a teasing lilt to his voice. There's none of the usual condescension, just a sharp jab about how long she's been away from Earth, that might hurt if it were actually directed at her. He reminds her far too much of the boys she'd grown up around, with their infuriating, tough exteriors and biting cheek, the cool pragmatism of a kid from a big city, even if the wrong one. He'll have moments where stiff military decorum gives way to an achingly familiar swagger, braggadocio oozing out of his pores. It makes her _like_ him despite herself, reminds her of home in a way that Kepler himself probably doesn't expect. 

"Wow," Lovelace says, nudging his upper arm with her shoulder, "things _have_ changed."

He allows the touch, leans into it, plays along. There's a flash of teeth and a challenge in his eyes when he says, "How do you feel about another poker night sometime, Captain?"

"Only if you give me the primer on ASL," she shoots back. "Some card-counting tips wouldn't hurt either."

"Done. Although I don't think you need much help with that."

"I used to play on the subway with my friends," she says. Lovelace might not have the patience to count cards, but she'd always been good at reading people, playing cautiously. Kepler'd tapped out of the game a while after Jacobi but before Lovelace, citing boredom and an increasingly small chance of winning; without his interference, Maxwell cleaned Isabel out and won Poker Night. The score now sits at 1-1-1, a three-way tie none of them are happy with. "Long commute to school," she explains, jotting down 'burners', 'fake IDs', and 'your Swiss bank account #s'. Then, 'mansion in the Hamptons'.

"Oh?" says Kepler, glancing over her arm and huffing at the last two items. He'd forgotten she was a prankster, but she'll probably be more angry than anything when he actually does give her access to his smallest Swiss account. It'd be easier than having to personally approve everything she might potentially need, and Lovelace's record had indicated an honest, if excessively prepared solider when put in charge of resource acquisition. Not that he'd begrudge anyone that. "Where was it?" he asks, more out of politeness than genuine curiosity. It was, after all, in her dossier.

"Tribeca."

"Well," he observes, "that's not far from Brooklyn."

"I was on the other side of the borough." She smiles, reminiscing as they turn back to a blueprint of Goddard's Canaveral HQ. "Last I heard, the hipsters haven't even started moving in yet, that's how far out..."


	13. Chapter 13

"For this _exact situation_ ," Jacobi says, torn between impressed and livid as he flips through the folder Kepler had given him. There's a full dossier inside it, exactly like ones they used to receive during briefings on particularly difficult persons of interest, except the passport photocopies, credit cards and lease contracts come attached to _his own face_. "This is crazy," he continues as Maxwell impassively browses her own file, "we even have _credit scores_ and _bank accounts_ and _mutual fund investments_. Where'd all this money even come from? It's... more than I had saved when we went into space."

"This is what was coming out of our salaries every month, I think." Maxwell does the calculations in her head, eyeing a record of transactions over the last four years and matching them to her paycheck deductions. The investment accounts have been returning a steady profit, because of _course_ Kepler, who liked to say that he put _all_ his assets to work, would never just leave money languishing, unused and hidden away. "The numbers add up."

"You mean taxes and 401Ks?" Jacobi shuffles a few pages and squints at a record of pay stubs addressed to an apartment in Chicago. Maxwell's cover seems to be based in Los Angeles. "Which, by the way, it looks like Nick Franklin and Ada Vaughan were paying?"

"Technically," she reminds him, "Alana Maxwell and Daniel Jacobi didn't have any taxes or 401Ks after they died tragically in 2013 and 2011, respectively."

"I guess assuming we even lived long enough to retire from Goddard work," he sighs, "it's not as if we could return to our old identities."

Maxwell rolls her chair over to where Jacobi's perched on the edge of her bed, reading upside-down over the top of his folder. "The Franklin account was opened a week after you were hired," she observes, distantly wondering what would qualify as an appropriate reaction to all this new information. Passing them whole new identities right under Lovelace's nose and banishing them from the room to give them an out to investigate is really just like Kepler. "Vaughan a week after I was."

"You think he's done this for everyone who's ever worked for him?"

"We can ask. How has no one at Goddard picked up on any of this? Did Cutter know?"

"Pretty sure SI-5 was totally off the books, so Kepler was cutting the checks himself." At least, Jacobi's pretty sure he's seen the colonel working on payroll, and considering he only had two subordinates under his direct command, it'd make sense if it was theirs. "No one was watching where the money was going, except maybe Cutter and Young. I'm sure he routed it through a couple dozen countries before it reached these accounts." 

Alana returns her attention to her own folder. It was smart of Kepler to fund the accounts with their own salaries instead of his, even if he could afford it. Since working for Goddard, money had never been a problem for Maxwell and she hadn't questioned the deductions very much at all. Jacobi wasn't a big spender either, doubly cautious after that time he was scammed over a collection of Civil War-era antique bayonets. "If we wanted to go underground and disappear," she says, "these would probably tide us over for a year. Year and a half if we're careful."

"More than enough time to find a cover job, yeah. Are you considering it?"

"Become a fugitive and die of boredom," Maxwell says, "or stick with Kepler and have access to the Goddard databases? Come on, Daniel."

It was also Kepler who had asked her to recover the money Jacobi had lost to that con artist on eBay. He knew her expertise with computers extended to cracking, and he knew enough about internet scams to give her a decent lead on where to find the culprit, and then he'd sworn her to secrecy because Jacobi would be mortified to find out that they knew. 'Credit card company must have handled it,' she'd said when he finally told her the story and apologized for being short with her for a week; it had clearly been weighing on him. 

( _'How do I know so much about internet scams, Dr. Maxwell? Did I ever tell you about that time I had to get my hands on an ancient Mesopotamian artifact for Goddard's Paranormal Division?'_ )

"So he knew Goddard would screw us," Jacobi sighs, not that he's particularly shocked about it, "and screw him."

"I'm sure he was aware of the possibility," Maxwell answers. They were, after all, part of the division specifically created to take care of both internal and external hindrances to company progress.

"He could've _told us_ ," Jacobi complains, but his tone is already cooling off, clearly touched by the gesture even if he didn't like being kept in the dark about it. That's the vast majority of what Kepler does for his team-- quiet, behind the scenes, not even traceable to himself half the time in case anyone starts mistakenly thinking that he _cares_. "I already have an account for my slush funds," he says, "and Kepler had to have known about it."

"He's telling us now."

"I think he's letting Lovelace have a _Swiss_ account. How many of those d'you think he has?"

"I know Kepler's salary was in the high six figures," Maxwell says absently, rearranging her files back to their original configuration and setting the folder on her desk. "you need a minimum of $100,000 for most Swiss accounts, and factoring in his spending habits, yearly maintenance fees... at least two or three throwaways. Maybe a main account and one for whatever fake identity he'll be using back on Earth. He didn't have as much in checking or savings as I expected, I'm sure it's spread around. You know." Maxwell lowers her pitch, gruff and joking. "'A paranoid is just a man with all the facts.'"

"Alana."

"Hm?"

"You hacked his _bank_?!"

"I couldn't trace the money, but I did have access to the account that Goddard paid into." She puts both hands up, palms out, while Jacobi gapes at her. "You didn't maintain yours very well, Daniel, if you invested like Kepler did with the Franklin account, you could've been averaging a fourteen percent return every year."

"You hacked _my_ bank!?"

"I'm not doing anything with the information, I just wanted to know!" Plucking Jacobi's folder out of his hands, she flips through it while he comes to terms with the complete lack of respect for professional boundaries both of his colleagues seem to find perfectly okay. Objectively, both of them have only done it to help him, and he shouldn't expect anything else from black ops agents. He probably should've done some snooping himself. "I have one of my own. Should we consolidate them?" Maxwell asks.

Jacobi shakes his head, both to clear it and in answer to her question. "Vaughan and Franklin are solid covers, but if they get made, it's better to have more backups. You can bet Kepler does."

"Oh, fine. I'll show Vic how to manage financial profiles so I won't have to keep track of all of this. Send him your information when you get the chance?"

Anyone else would probably balk at the idea of handing the keys to their finances over to an AI, but Maxwell knows Invictus better than anyone, and if she trusts him, Jacobi doesn't question her judgment. "Yeah," he says. "'Course."

* * *

One of the last places Minkowski expects to find Kepler is in the Urania's bridge, gravity inexplicably turned off in that sector and the colonel himself upside-down, wrestling with a bundle of wires above the central console. "What," she says, already reaching for the pistol holstered at her hip and eyeing the pliers in his hand, "are you doing?"

"Defying gravity," he says, voice muffled around the three strips of electrical tape clenched in his teeth. Vic's shell floats beside him, holding the roll itself. He takes a strip, wraps it carefully around an open, frayed section of wire, and then moves it aside to reach for another one. "Your crew did a _number_ on the Urania detaching it from the Hephaestus. Jacobi's in Engineering patching up one of the exhaust vents."

"No, I mean, what are you doing _here_ , in the bridge, with that box of tools?"

Lovelace slides past her at the door, kicking off to join Kepler near the ceiling. "He's with me, Minkowski." She slaps a pair of wire cutters into his extended hand, peering over his shoulder as he digs his hands back into the bundle of cables. Kepler doesn't have the mechanical, technical or engineering expertise that either of his subordinates do, but he works with an ease and familiarity that speaks to the same on-the-fly experience that Lovelace herself had to pick up. "Hera's got an eye on him too in case he tries anything."

"Maxwell asked me to look into a faulty sensor up here," he says, focused on the task at hand but scoping the room at regular intervals, reorienting himself and silently cataloguing every change, "and it seemed more _expedient_ to do it with the gravity off." He exhales sharply, quirking one dark brow at Minkowski's scowl. "Still so suspicious."

"Well," she says, "you _are_ a manipulative hardass who just says what he has to to get people to do what you want them to."

Unexpectedly, _that_ gets a reaction. He reclines, a bizarre sight in zero-G, as if he were kicking back on an invisible couch nailed to the ceiling, and gives her a confused look. " _Manipulative_?" he echoes, incredulous. "I tell people exactly what I want, how I want it, and why it benefits everyone to do as I say. If they don't, I threaten them until they do." Then he shrugs, turning to meet Lovelace's eyes, an expression of polite curiosity on his face. "Seems pretty straightforward to me."

Isabel shoots him the dirtiest look she can muster, punching him on the upper arm as she considers his words and finally turns to Minkowski with an apologetic grimace. She's so frequently slingshotted between grudging respect for the man and seething dislike for Kepler that it's starting to give her whiplash. "Actually," she says, "that's... kind of true."

" _How are you on his side about this?!_ "

"I'm not on his side about this, I'm not saying he can be trusted, I'm just saying... he's not _that_ manipulative."

"Is that really your metric?" Minkowski crosses her arms. "There are a lot of different kinds of manipulation, Captain."

"He says nice things when he's happy and mean things when he's mad." A shrug. Just to prove a point about how distinctly unthreatening she finds him, Lovelace elbows him lightly in the ribs as he returns to work. He's made concessions to her on the Hephaestus, and whatever he's planning now, she clearly has a place in it that would be better served by humoring her. "Kepler's a monster," she points out, "but he's not a mastermind. I mean, he couldn't even pick up when Jacobi was about to turn on him."

"Thanks," Kepler deadpans. "Really appreciate that." Whatever he'd been doing with the wires, he seems finished now, tapping out a message to Maxwell on a little portable communicator and waiting on her all-clear before he shoves the bundle of wires into the wall and slots the panel back into its place. "Much as I'd like to be some puppetmaster, pulling strings," he drawls, locking eyes with Lovelace as he gathers up his tools, shoving off the ceiling and toward the ground, "I can't beat _some_ people for manipulation."

 _I know what you did with the pulse beacon relay,_ the look says, a clear escalation, _and if we're not on the same page about this, so will Minkowski._

She's never liked being threatened, but Isabel knows that Minkowski's trust is predicated on _good intentions_ and not actionable results. It's the only way she'd put up with Eiffel for so long but found Kepler's presence intolerable when Eiffel's actions on the station had objectively posed a much more persistent and dangerous threat in sheer incompetence. If Minkowski found out that she and Hilbert _planned_ for her to find out about her staged death, Lovelace would lose whatever trust she'd so painstakingly gained since the day she arrived on the Hephaestus.

It doesn't stop her from grabbing the closest handhold, crouching against the bulkhead and aiming herself toward Kepler. It's his fault for being so punchable, and she's nowhere near as tolerant of this specific brand of underhanded bullshit. Suddenly, Jacobi's impulse to take Kepler's side one moment and pull a gun on him the next makes far too much sense. 

He turns as his feet hit the floor, a silent snarl on his lips as his cybernetic hand clenches around the handle of the toolbox. Despite his earlier monotone, she'd clearly hit a nerve. 

A buzz from the intercom jars them both out of the moment. "Captain," Hera cuts in, "don't get into this with him. It won't end well."

Lovelace narrows her eyes, following Kepler's gaze as it drifts to Minkowski, who has her hand on the butt of her pistol. Still holstered, but if they did throw down, she wouldn't take Kepler's side. "You think I'd lose, Hera?"

" _I_ think you'll end up venting him out of another airlock, sir." 

Kepler huffs, anger sliding off his face to be replaced by mild amusement. He doesn't say anything, temper already brought back under control as he positions himself by the door, waiting on Lovelace to join them on the ground. 

"Too soon?" Hera asks, breaking the awkward silence.

"Not at all," Kepler reassures her through clenched teeth. 

Vic's shell flashes briefly as he sends a message to Hera and she makes a disgusted sound. "Ugh, of course he has. Restoring gravity to Bridge sector."

"Has what?" asks Lovelace.

"Already made that joke."

"Well," says Kepler, sidestepping Minkowski as he leaves the room and waits in the corridor, "it's not a very creative one."

"Do you have anything _else_ to say?" Minkowski snarls, glaring at him. 

He'd argue that it's a bit unfair to blame _him_ for the tension when Lovelace is the one provoking him but it wouldn't gain him any points with this crew. "I'm not getting in the middle of this," he answers, and for someone who'd been ready to throttle Lovelace not twenty seconds ago, Kepler sounds almost cheerful. "In fact, you have no idea how happy I am to inform you all that whatever internal issues you're working through, it's _not_ my problem."

"Oh," Hera scoffs, "next you're gonna tell me you're not a micromanaging control freak."

"Not unless I'm under orders to be." He gives them a moment to reaffirm to themselves how much they hate that he's telling the truth, how he leverages facts to push some ulterior motive no one else is privy to. "I picked Jacobi and Maxwell for how much they _don't_ need me to hold their hands through every unexpected development; you think I wouldn't make the same choice for every crew I worked with? Ask Lovelace."

Minkowski's hand shoots out to grab him by the sleeve of his jacket, her knuckles white. "What's that supposed to mean?" 

"Well, she came up to the Hephaestus with the cream of the crop. Brilliant crew. Excellent work ethic all around. Smart, independent folks who could get things done and make decisions for themselves without being outright insubordinate. Imagine what she had to work with once the star spat her back out. And Hilbert again, no less."

"He's dead," Minkowski says, slowly and clearly, emphasis on every syllable. "We're not dredging this up again."

"No. No, dredge this up again." Lovelace pins him with a long, hard look, dark eyes glittering. " _Please_. Be my _guest._ "

"Not much left to say. I wasn't a fan." Frustration flashes across Kepler's face, quickly shuttered away, but his tone speaks volumes as to how _unreasonable_ he finds them for trying to turn every interaction into a fight, as if he weren't instigating it himself through sheer infuriating smugness. "Say what you like about me," he says, "but I don't _experiment_ on my crew."

Renée scoffs. "That's not what Jacobi thinks."

"I never had all the answers, I just learned to... embrace the uncertainty."

"Your contingencies and pants are both on fire, Kepler."

"The point of having contingencies is to account for as many unexpected outcomes as possible," he reminds them, not at all gently, in a way that acutely reminds all three of his current company how much he'd like nothing more than to retake control of both crews-- if only to mitigate the need to explain things. "You three could stand to think about it more."

"And why would we take advice from _you_?" Minkowski retorts, nervously eyeing Lovelace as the other woman falls silent, regarding Kepler with a calculating, reluctantly impressed look on her face.

"I've worked for Goddard for... hm. Most of my life. My record's pretty good, and you're looking at a hundred percent failure rate, ladies."

"If you look at it our way," Hera counters immediately, "it's a hundred percent _success_ rate."

That finally gives him pause. Kepler had always considered Hera one of the smarter crewmembers of the Hephaestus, especially considering her tender age of four, and he acknowledges her with a laugh and a shrug. "You know, actually, that tracks." Turning back to Minkowski, his condescension dialed back just enough to reveal a trace of sincerity, he continues, "I was on the Hephaestus to see the mission through; commanding a space station is _not_ my specialty. Mutiny is _your_ game, but corporate espionage is mine."

Considering he'd done a more than adequate job commanding the space station, pulling them through situations that Minkowski didn't think anyone could survive, the thought of Kepler actually in his element is simultaneously horrifying and reassuring. "It's not a _game_ , Kepler."

He doesn't answer, leaving them with a long, thoughtful look as he heads back to the Sol. _Isn't it?_

"Okay," Lovelace says under her breath, "we don't say _anything_ important in the Bridge from now on. Assume it's bugged. Engineering and Hera's Omni too."

"If you think it's all bugged," Hera says, waiting for Kepler to move out of earshot, "why are we even pretending to cooperate?" 

"We don't know his intention yet. It might be harmless."

" _How can a bug be harmless?_ " Minkowski whisper-shouts, ready to storm back into the Bridge to scour it for anything Kepler might've changed. "How can being bugged by _Kepler_ be harmless?"

Lovelace snags her by the elbow before she can proceed, effortlessly holding Minkowski in place. "You remember my dead man's switch?" she asks, sotto voce.

"Yes. A little hard to _forget_ , Captain."

"I didn't think I'd _need_ it, but I had it just in case." Nonchalantly: "I'm gonna assume he's doing the same."

"If you think it's harmless," Renée hisses back, "why are we not saying important things in the Bridge?"

"In case it's not."

"If there's a risk that it's not, _why are we cooperating_?"

Looping her arm through Minkowski's, Isabel steers them both back toward the Urania's canteen. "You ever play chess, Minkowski?"

"I _hate_ chess."

Lovelace idly considers that Minkowski _had_ threatened to drop the whole station into the star when she was (figuratively) checkmated, the equivalent of flipping the entire board. Effective enough in space, but not likely to work in any context less contained than a station orbiting a star seven lightyears away from civilization. "Well," she says, already considering the conversations they might _let slip_ in the Bridge, "you're gonna hate this corporate espionage thing a whole lot more."


	14. Chapter 14

"Darren Carver," Kepler says over his plate of cavatelli. "It's attached to the New York property," he tells Maxwell, spearing a bit of pasta and spinach on his fork, "so I was gonna head there first. Florida's out of the question until Goddard sorts itself out and tries to pretend we never existed." He's been experimenting with pasta lately, running through demonstrations with Vic to pass the time, which is unfortunate for Invictus but an absolute boon for the rest of SI-5 as far as Jacobi's concerned. The trip up to the Hephaestus had mostly involved obsessively reviewing the crew's files and re-briefing Jacobi and Maxwell until they knew The Plan and all twelve contingencies and all six corollaries for each contingency by heart. 

It had made the first leg of their rotation pretty _fun_ , events falling into place more or less as he said they would along the approximate timeline he'd laid out, right up until The Mutiny, but it didn't mean the surprise quizzes and frequent reminders were any more bearable. Whatever new plan Kepler's on now, it's clearly been in the works for a long time and he's keeping it mostly to himself. _You don't need to know; you just need to follow._

"That's a little similar to Warren Kepler," Maxwell says, her expression perking. She's seated next to him at the island, only half paying attention to her food as she taps away at the tablet in front of her. "And I didn't see a New York property in the material you gave us."

"That's the one I kept off the books." He glances at her, considering her observation for a second, as if he hadn't really considered the implications of choosing a cover ID with a name even remotely similar to his own, and shrugs. He'd make different choices now, perhaps, but back when this particular contingency was forming, he'd been scrambling. "And what can I say, I like names that end in -arren and -er."

"That makes you sound like a Muppet," Jacobi quips, picking the greens out of his own dish and grimacing when Kepler gives him a disappointed look. He puts them back, reluctantly taking a bite of the pasta and then digging in more readily when nothing turns out to be bland and mushy. 

Satisfied, Kepler lets the comment slide. "If I slip up on a signature," he says, "there's a bit of leeway. Plausible deniability."

Muffled around a bulging cheek-full of pasta: "That something that happens?"

"Hasn't yet, but you can't be too careful." 

"Have you heard anything from the Urania yet?" Maxwell asks, taking advantage of Kepler's indulgent, chatty mood to pry a little more information out of him. Her timing always was better than Jacobi's.

"Oh," says Warren, polishing off the rest of his plate and nudging it slightly closer to the center of the table, "I'm not actually listening. Invictus is gonna let me know if anything important comes up." 

Sighing, Jacobi pokes at a gnarled little shell of pasta. Kepler was always a delegator, shuffling simple, tedious work to people who could be trusted to do it, but this time around he hadn't informed Jacobi of any plans to bug the Urania (not that he would've agreed to), even though they had _both_ been working on the other ship. "I know you're you," he says, "but is it _actually_ necessary to have them under surveillance? Don't you think they'd know?" 

"They'd think I was even if I wasn't," Kepler answers matter-of-factly and Jacobi knows it's true, or at least that Lovelace is shrewd enough to suspect and expect it, "and what they choose to let us hear is almost as important as what they accidentally let slip." 

"Maybe if we acted more trustworthy," Daniel deadpans, "they'd trust us." 

Kepler gives him a chilly stare, disbelieving. Jacobi's _usually_ the most skeptical of the three of them, doubtful that some crazy, impossible thing can be done, practically skittish around strangers and temporary additions to the team. (Kepler, at least, calls it _skittish_ but Jacobi and everyone else would generally phrase it as 'being an asshole'.) "Your memory of events must be _very_ different from mine," Warren drawls, ticking off items on his fingers as he lists them. "We saved Eiffel, brought a rotation and a half's worth of supplies after they couldn't figure out how to properly ration and store what they came up with, patched up a station they'd been trying their damnedest to destroy, and we were nice enough to try and see this mission through with them instead of shooting them on the spot and throwing them into the star. They still mutinied."

 _Contingency B, corollary 4_ , Jacobi's mind unhelpfully supplies. "Yeah, but if we'd done that, Cutter probably would've succeeded with the whole, replace humanity thing."

"Do you think the contact event would've gone the way it did if we were the ones in charge up there?" Kepler asks. "Probably wouldn't've gone down at all, and we'd shut down the project and head back to Earth. Easy peasy."

"Like you'd ever pass up a chance to talk to aliens," Jacobi scoffs, watching Kepler fight back a grin. As much of a disaster as that encounter had been, he _did_ get to encounter aliens and save humanity, so he probably considers it an overall win. Madman. 

"It's because you're like a shark," Maxwell tells him, ignoring the alarmed look from Jacobi and meeting Kepler's glance with a knowing smile. "You're not receptive like Eiffel is."

"Excuse me?"

"You look so calm and sleek, but the moment you smell blood in the water, all your teeth come out. And you're always moving, metaphorically, like if you stopped, you'd suffocate." It's not the first time Kepler's been called a shark, but Maxwell sees him consider her words, the corner of his mouth twitching up in an amused little smirk. It's complimentary, if anything, exactly the sort of image the colonel likes to project. "The Listeners never would've felt safe enough to approach if you were running things," she points out-- particularly because they would've had the psi-wave regulators fully functional. 

"Maybe they'd all have trusted us more if we showed up and _also_ immediately put on a clown show of incompetence," he concedes, "but I _like_ being good at my job." A huff. Then, turning the conversation deftly back onto Alana: "That's an uncharacteristically biological analogy for you, Dr. Maxwell. Not the usual description of sharks."

"I ran out of computational astrophysics seminars to watch and started on nature documentaries."

"And to be perfectly fair," Jacobi points out, "they were right not to trust us." 

"I didn't say they weren't," Kepler reminds him. "Just that there was no way at all to gain their trust, simply by virtue of being Goddard employees in good standing. Based on our past history, I doubt they trust me now, but we _can_ work together." 

"I thought you kinda liked them. Especially Eiffel." 

"He survived over two hundred days in and out of cryo, that was a _hell_ of a first impression." _The kind of thing I'd expect from the two of you,_ he'd said to Jacobi and Maxwell once he'd debrided all the cryo-burned skin off Eiffel's body, bundled him into a blanket and stuffed him into the spare room with a pouch of warm soup, _not that either of you would be careless enough to be ejected into deep space_. "Then we got into the day-to-day and... well." 

Jacobi slumps back in his seat, arms crossing over his chest. Kepler liked versatility in his subordinates, encouraged (read: forced) Maxwell and himself to pick up new skills and round out the ones they had, apply them to situations outside of their chosen fields. They weren't trained to think outside the box so much as given the freedom to dismantle it entirely and reassemble it into something newer and better, as is their natural inclination. He tolerated mistakes to a point, enough to let them test the bounds of their abilities, but then he'd ask them to _figure out the problem_ and take care of it with all the resources and clout that the company had to offer. 

All that leeway, the comfort and safety of a Goddard Futuristics-shaped cushion-- it's gone, now.

"Man," Jacobi sighs, shifting his empty plate under Kepler's and then putting his fork on top, "I'm so not ready for whatever we're going back to." 

"You'll be fine." Kepler winces as soon as he hears the words come out of his own mouth, acutely reminded of when Jacobi was distinctly _not_ fine, of when his absolute, unshakeable faith in Jacobi's _fine_ -ness came back to bite him, but Jacobi's expectant quirk of a brow prompts him to continue. "Cutter's plans were untenable anyway," he says, _I planned for this_ being the best and only reassurance he knows how to give, "it was always gonna come down to this." 

"You have no idea how weird it is to hear you say that even you've got limits."

"You wanna know the secret, Jacobi?"

"Sure. Tell me."

"The line is maintained by bastards like us." Kepler grins, knowing the cryptic statement warrants elaboration, but he waits on Maxwell to refocus her attention back to him before he gives it. "Minkowski, she's... almost always on the right side of it. But she tries her best to stay there, so when she crosses it, that's it. Her entire framework of reality shatters, because it was based on _not crossing that line_." Jacobi sure as hell doesn't think of Minkowski as a _good person_. Being SI-5 made you question the goodness of people on a macro scale, but he can acknowledge that the Hephaestus crew (excepting Hilbert) had generally _tried_. "She doesn't even know where it is, much less where it needs to stay, all she needs to know is that she's as far away from it as she can possibly get." 

Maxwell narrows her eyes while Jacobi heaves a sigh and makes a 'sure-why-not' gesture. From that perspective, and the context of this conversation, he's not _wrong_ in his assessment.

"People like Rachel Young," Kepler says, looking Jacobi square in the eyes as if to remind him of the last exchange they ever had, "Marcus Cutter, Miranda Pryce? There _is_ no line. They've said it often enough."

"Are you implying they're _not_ bastards?"

"No, Jacobi. They're visionaries. I respected that, and I still do." No surprise there: for someone who usually accepted others' limitations, he'd always gravitated toward people who broke molds, bucked authority, shook off what society said Should be and saw humanity for what it Could be. "But for them, there's no... event horizon. No red line. Morality isn't even a factor in deciding what they should and shouldn't do."

"So what's that make you?" Jacobi challenges. "Us?"

"Wouldn't you say that we're perfectly aware of where the line is, Jacobi? Where the _lines_ are?" He doesn't say it but Jacobi hears it: _Every time you killed someone, every bomb you set, every casualty of our operations-- you knew whether or not they deserved it, and the truth is, sometimes they didn't._ "We're stradding a line every second of every day. Sometimes we're on the right side of it and sometimes we're not, but when we're not, we know _exactly_ where we stand. If you or Maxwell ever got it into your heads that you were _good people_ or that there _was_ no line, that would've been... a problem. But you saw yourself approaching _your_ line. The one you wouldn't cross. So you stopped, and you didn't go any further."

"That's why you changed your mind," Jacobi says softly, eyes on the tiny lift of Kepler's shoulders, the dispassionate shrug. He very nearly regrets their last exchange, his anger, simultaneously trying to hurt and cajole Kepler into doing the right thing _for once_. But he knows Kepler probably planned for that, too, both Daniel deciding to fall in line _and_ for him to stay with Minkowski. No point regretting an exchange that had secured Warren's cover, maybe even gave him enough wiggle room to sabotage the pulse beacon relay. No point thinking about how to undo the past. "That was your line."

Maxwell smiles, not so much in realization but as if she'd finally confirmed a long-held belief. "And that's why you wanted me out of Nash. Nash had stupid lines."

"Don't you know better than anyone else how dangerous an AI can be?" He nudges her with his elbow, catches her eye. He doesn't often give Maxwell _positive feedback_ , so this is new, and it's exciting, and she kind of likes it. She's never needed praise, always aware of just how good she really is, and they had an understanding that as long as Kepler wasn't raking her over the coals, she was doing fine. "You go right up to the edge," he says, "you're willing to test it, but you always know how to pull yourself back. _That's_ why I wanted you."

"So as long as we know where the line is," she says slowly, "we know how to get back on the right side of it?"

"More like we hang around on the wrong side of it and shoot anyone going too far past it in the back," Jacobi quips. 

Kepler laughs-- not the evil slow-laugh ('ah, ha, ha') he puts on for the intimidation factor but an unplanned hitch in his breath, like all the air's been punched out of his lungs. Maxwell nods, finding the imagery both accurate and to her liking, and for a brief, shining moment Jacobi can imagine that they're back on Earth, on some rote corporate espionage project where they sneak Maxwell into a building and wait and joke around while she fudges test results and plants undetectable scrapers on rival companies' databases. There's a familiar warmth in his chest that he hasn't felt in months, an ease and comfort to the dynamic that he never thought he'd have again.

And then the crash, which Daniel's apparently the only one who's experiencing in his little crisis chair. He doesn't say so out loud, part of him desperate to simply bask in the feeling of home, _I'm home again, I'm back where I belong, with my people, my friends, the pillars that hold up the corners of my heart_. The rest of him can't stop screaming that they're not real, they're not the Kepler and Maxwell he'd found his family in, and he's not the Jacobi who should be with them. 

Maxwell gives him a look, no doubt catching the microexpressions on his face that she can't properly parse, and Kepler catches her watching him, so now he's turned his eyes on Jacobi as well. Warren, for his part, is an _expert_ at reading human haptics, but he seems to decide after a moment not to address it, turning back to jot down some notes on his phone. Ironically, letting Jacobi stew in his own doubt, doing him the courtesy of not acknowledging any moment of weakness, is probably the most Kepler thing he's done since his return, and that's bizarrely calming. 

"Sir," Maxwell says after a moment, trying not to look too concerned about Jacobi, "could you help me test something?"

"What is it?"

"Tetris Battle." She pulls a TI-84 from one of her oversized labcoat pockets and slides it across the table to him. He and Lovelace seem to have more or less wrapped up their planning, or at least moved on to a different phase where waiting on external factors is all they can do. Without any specific task, Kepler would have to find something to occupy himself, and a bored Kepler is _insufferable_. "I was going to have Hera and Vic play each other, but they went too fast. And then I tried to play Hera, but she beat me in... fifteen seconds. So I was wondering if you could play someone so I can debug."

"Sure." Kepler stuffs his phone into his pocket and reaches for the calculator, turning it on. "Invictus, could you patch Hera through?"

A chirp from Vic, and then Hera, sounding immensely displeased to be summoned (by Kepler, no less), pipes up a second later. "What."

Kepler's already started a game, initially fumbling through the buttons before he settles into a rhythm. He doesn't look up. "What's Captain Lovelace up to?"

"She's with Eiffel, but they're not doing anything."

"Maxwell, do you have two more calculators?"

It's a silly question. The first thing Kepler did upon gaining control of the ship was check the manifest and correlate it to their inventory. He knows exactly how many calculators Maxwell has. Or, rather: how many calculators Pryce came on board with. She didn't need them, able to do precise mathematical equations in her head, but it never hurt to have redundancies. She's already fishing another calculator out of her pocket and heading for the Urania. "I do."

"Maybe three," Kepler says, slipping off his seat and heading for the couch, already engrossed in the game, "if Jacobi wants in."

"I don't." Daniel follows him anyway, settling beside Kepler on the couch and peering over his arm as he builds line after neat line.

"Suit yourself."


	15. Chapter 15

Jacobi's been watching Kepler play Tetris for about an hour, slumped against his arm and chin balanced on his shoulder after a polite lean with plenty of distance became too much to sustain. Other than an accidental hard drop of an L-shaped tetrimino into the wrong place, Kepler hadn't reacted to the shift and he almost instantly rectified his mistake, sending two lines to Lovelace. "Y'know," Jacobi says after a while, just loud enough to carry over the sound of Korobeiniki playing out of a _goddamn calculator_ that by all rights shouldn't even have a speaker, "I never took you for the self-sacrificial type." 

Warren takes a while to respond, simultaneously trying to play _and_ catch up to whatever train of thought Jacobi's been chewing on. He narrows his eyes as the game gets faster and his blocks begin to fall closer to the top, attempting to fend off both Lovelace and Eiffel while maintaining his pretty, even lines. "That's because self-sacrifice is a stupid concept," he says, finally, breathing a sigh of relief when a block he'd been waiting for finally appears. "I make perfectly reasonable expenditures of resources to achieve an objective."

Daniel snorts, sitting up slightly when Kepler moves his arm to get his circulation back, then instantly resumes his use of his ex-CO as a pillow. Kepler has a good shoulder-- nicely padded with muscle. He'd be lanky if it weren't for the wiry strength on every inch of him, bulking him up enough to fill out a suit but not enough to hint at how much he could lift if he really put his mind to it. "You _literally sacrificed yourself_ to stop the pulse beacon relay," Jacobi points out, absently noting the way a hard trapezius muscle pulls taut under his chin. 

Years of observation told him that the colonel carries stress in his shoulders, his neck. He rolls them frequently, shaking the stiffness out of his absurdly long limbs when he thinks no one is watching, but if he thinks Jacobi isn't eyeing the way muscle ripples across his back every chance he gets...

"I expended all my resources to stop the pulse beacon relay," Kepler says, tone flat. Bullets. His reputation. His life. "That's what humanity's worth to me, so it wasn't... a difficult choice."

Part of Jacobi acknowledges that it's perfectly consistent with Kepler's personality to coldly weigh his priorities against human lives, but Daniel hadn't expected him to come down on this side of the scale. "Honestly," he mumbles, "the more we talk, the less I understand you."

"Sacrifice means you've lost something for nothing." Kepler cuts himself off to send a few lines to Eiffel, who'd proven to be surprisingly adept at the game. He had commented earlier that at least Eiffel's inclination to slack off resulted in him being a decent opponent at Tetris, if only through muscle memory. "I don't give up _anything_ without some kind of return on investment, even if I'm not the beneficiary, so it's not a damn _sacrifice_ to make sure humanity survives." Warren clears two lines, then drops a full tetris to knock Lovelace out. "First law of thermodynamics," he says, tip of his tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth, too focused on the game to repress the impulse. "Lavoisier. _Fermi_." 

Jacobi snorts. Kepler's intentionally bringing up Lavoisier and Fermi to a man who, often literally, lives and dies by the laws of thermodynamics. "Lavoisier is conservation of _mass_ ," he says, but the point isn't lost on him. Kepler's just scientist enough to wrangle Maxwell, diplomat enough to wheel and deal with any politician, mercenary enough to go toe to toe with any soldier. Engineer enough to know and relate to Jacobi's metaphorical hard-on for Enrico Fermi's entire body of work. 

"Either way," he drawls, hissing through his teeth when Eiffel finally takes him out and starts a new match, "you let someone have something for nothing from you, they're gonna think that's just how things work."

"So letting me be mind-controlled was a _reasonable expenditure_ for humanity?" Daniel can actually feel the growl rumble through Kepler's chest when he brings this topic back up, but even the colonel must know that a thirty-second exchange an hour before he got vented out of an airlock couldn't be considered any kind of resolution. Whatever scrap of self-preservation Jacobi has left is telling him to get the hell away, but the _really comfy_ part of his brain won't let him pick his head off Warren's shoulder. "Is that how I should see it?" he asks, half-muffling the question into the material of Kepler's sleeve.

"It was the _only option_ to get you out alive." The colonel has two modes of speaking slowly: the one where he has absolutely no regard for your time over enjoying the sound of his own voice and the one where he's trying _real hard_ to maintain his smooth, even keel. The brief pause before he answers is more than enough to tell Jacobi that right now, it's the latter. "You can see it however you like," Kepler says, "but if I thought there was another way, I would've taken it." 

" _Two weeks,_ " Jacobi says. Just for emphasis. 

"If you have _feedback_ , I'll take it into consideration for the next time you get _mind-controlled_."

"Yeah, don't let it happen in the first place!"

"Stay home, then!" Kepler leans forward, conveniently prompting Jacobi to sit up straight, and drops the calculator onto the table in front of them, too distracted to keep playing. "I can't guarantee that."

"You didn't have, I dunno, a _contingency_ in place for it?"

"There was no evidence that Pryce was capable of doing that to a person." Kepler turns to him, the full force of his attention fixed on an instantly regretting-it Jacobi. They're both still sitting, still on the couch, but years of being attuned to one man's moods don't go away after a few months. "She developed the technology _on the Hermes_ while they were there," he says, eyes ablaze. It's the closest he'll ever get to admitting that Pryce and Cutter had outclassed him on every conceivable level. "You're a scientist, Jacobi, tell me how _you'd_ prepare for every theoretical application of every kind of technology known to man. I'd actually, _really_ like to know."

"Yeah, well--" Jacobi inhales, holds for four seconds and then breathes out, keeps his tone even, "sometimes people _feel things_ , and it's not gonna be rational, and you can't just _logic_ emotions away, and I'm still pretty mad about it."

Kepler's face goes blank in a fraction of a second. The next, he's put on an expression of flat bemusement. "I understand that you're angry," he says, clearly finding the statement useless. "That shouldn't have happened to you."

"Now I know you're just saying that to shut me up."

"Yeah, no _shit_ that shouldn't have happened to you. You know that. I know that." Warren narrows his eyes, thoughtful, and lowers his voice. "Do you need me to constantly reaffirm things you already know back to you?" he asks, not entirely rhetorical, but clearly expecting one answer over another. 

Would that have helped? Jacobi surprises even himself when his conclusion turns out to be, "No," and he snickers at the thought of a therapist turning in their grave. 

"I didn't think so. You're well past the point of needing me to _validate your feelings_."

The thing about working with Colonel Warren Kepler was that he didn't tolerate second-guessing, not from himself or his subordinates. They learned to have a solution or to get out of his way, no room for doubt and no time for reassurances. With so many do-or-die split-second decisions forced on them, they had to develop confidence to match, an absolute belief in their own senses, instincts, expertise. Trust is a _habit_ , in themselves and in each other, and whatever grudges Jacobi still holds against him, Kepler had cultivated it carefully, judiciously, and thoroughly. 

He sighs, dragging both hands down his face. "How do you do it?"

"Do what?"

" _Not_ feel things."

"I don't." Kepler meets Jacobi's stare with an irritated frown. "I have a brain, it responds regardless of what _I_ want. I just _choose_ not to acknowledge the ones that don't make sense."

Jacobi is distantly aware that he shouldn't find that as endearing as he does, but it sounds so much like something Maxwell had said once (' _I have a squishy human brain and it does stupid human things, but I don't have to like it,_ ) that he has to consciously stop himself from wrapping an arm around Kepler's shoulders. No plans to get that arm wrenched out of its socket today. "That's most of them," he says instead. "Most emotions don't make sense."

"Yeah," Kepler says, speaking from the perspective of a man who made a career of jerking people around by their emotions, "exactly. Which is why I ignore them."

Jacobi... stares. He stares, and he feels his face split into an ear-to-ear grin, and then he starts to laugh. 

Years of being taken in by Kepler's professionalism, his charm, his praise, feeding off the mask he'd chosen to present to the world, and it'd taken interrogating his _alien clone_ for Jacobi to finally figure out that Kepler's just as messed up and awkward as anyone else he's ever met. No amount of repression, training, or acting could obscure that once he's been gently backed into this corner, by possibly the only man who knows him well enough to dig The Artist Formerly Known as Warren Kepler from the wreckage of Goddard Futuristics. "Colonel," Daniel says, catching his elbow, "sir, _Warren_." 

Kepler tenses, the arm under Jacobi's hand flexing in agitation, but he doesn't pull away, staring back when Daniel sneaks a look at him. There's an uncertain furrow between his brows, a wholly unfamiliar expression on a face that rarely has reason to be on anything but its 'angry', 'friendly' and 'neutral' settings. "Daniel?"

'Need to know' has always been bullshit, and Daniel sorta _liked_ the singled-minded missile that Kepler becomes on assignment, a guided rocket that hits home every time. But the man who took him on a fake stakeout just to give him a bag of fireworks, the one who maintained entire fake identities for his subordinates in case they had to bail from Goddard, who'd decided that humanity was worth saving even if he had to die to do it-- the man who drops _Lavoisier_ and _Fermi_ on Jacobi in the middle of an argument? Daniel had forgotten for a while-- weeks, months, a blink of an eye in the scope of how long they've known each other-- why _that_ was the man he followed to the edge of explored space. 

_There you are._

"You're so fucking _weird_ ," Daniel says, and he lets Kepler reel him in by the front of his shirt, cup a hand under his chin and tilt his face up. He meets Warren's sloe-eyed grin with one of his own, following the gentle tug, forward, to press his lips to Kepler's.

* * *

Kepler's kissed... more people than Jacobi cares to think about. They've always come back for more, unwitting fish to an irresistible lure, reeled in on a long, invisible line. Some he's had to kill and some he's had to sleep with, and the overlap isn't quite as complete as Jacobi wishes it were (one usually negates the need for the other). It's been years since they've done anything resembling a honeypot but way back when Daniel first started and Kepler was a little rougher around the edges, a little more inclined to showboat, they'd been assigned to a few. Cutter knew he liked them, and Kepler's as thorough and methodical about sex as he is about everything else. Part of the fun, he liked to say. Like a detective novel.

Maxwell and Jacobi were never ordered to listen in, although they had, once, out of curiosity. 'No wonder Cutter likes sending you on these,' Jacobi had said afterward with a good terabyte of data skimmed off Halloway Tech's servers. No one was dead and no one was hurt, and Kepler would become some long-married board member's guilty memory soon enough, never to be spoken to or of again. The ideal outcome to an assignment that would otherwise have Jacobi and Maxwell put _their_ skill-sets to use. 'Jesus, sir.'

Alana wasn't even twenty-five at the time and she'd given him a Look-- one Jacobi didn't recognize at the time but he would've pegged instantly for frustration now. She'd known even then that Daniel was caught, hook line and sinker, on their commanding officer. He was more oblivious to it then, and more obvious in his ignorance; stupid enough to fall for him, not dumb enough to recognize or act on it. 

'How do you learn something like that?' she'd asked Kepler instead, as if there were a textbook or a guide she might be able to refer to, having never had time nor interest for relationships or hook-ups. The apprehension in her face was clear-- she was so new to SI-5 then, unsure of how Kepler operated and what he'd ask of her but determined to either negotiate like hell or see it through, so long as she got to hold onto all her wondrous new toys.

'Just another skill,' he'd answered, like maybe there was a Goddard training program on seduction. 'Not one you ever need to learn for our purposes.' 

('On a personal level,' he'd said a moment later, 'all you can do is practice.')

And then Kepler had made good on that, which-- kindness toward Maxwell? If Daniel weren't head over heels for him before, that certainly clinched it. He kept Alana out of the line of fire, accurately predicting that she'd be a disastrous honeypot and also that she was much more useful at a keyboard, in their ears, as their eyes in the sky. She could play bright and flirty but reacted violently to any perceived or actual intrusion on her space, something Daniel _adored_ about her and he knew for certain that Kepler did too, an impulse Warren tempered and honed until it was accompanied by intimate hands-on knowledge of human joint torque. She and Jacobi both received combat training from their resident human weapon, but Maxwell used it more often and usually to better effect. 

(Alana was a terrible student, smarter and better than any teacher who'd attempt to control her, but Kepler directed her like the force of nature he recognized her to be. He'd give her just enough information to pique her interest, whip her passion and curiosity into a perfect vortex of controlled energy, then unleash her on whatever unsuspecting system stood in their way, all the while sitting happily in the eye of the storm, presiding over the chaos around them.

Years later, Maxwell would know exactly where she stood, exactly what she was and wasn't willing to do, what could and should be asked of her.)

Jacobi liked to think that Kepler had an easier time with him, but even then he knew that wasn't true. Kepler and Maxwell kept their distance from each other-- he used to read it as discomfort or dislike but eventually came to see it the way they did-- an easy acceptance of their roles and abilities, the ways their personalities clicked and where they clashed. They _usually_ had positive things to say about each other, two very competent employees who would choose to work together in a heartbeat but wouldn't even consider grabbing drinks together after hours if not for some mutual friend.

Daniel never could tolerate the chilly orbit they both tried to maintain, more accustomed to treating his colleagues as friends and family than as automatons who don't exist outside of the workplace. He spent two years without any sort of company and he refused to do more. Maxwell indulged him and thought herself better for it; Kepler indulged him too, but it cost him. 

_Blatant favoritism._

* * *

Warren kisses like it's the last one he'll ever have, careful, and slow, meticulous as he maps the line of Jacobi's teeth. The knuckles of his left hand graze Daniel's cheek in a lazy caress, sweep back to drag a thumb along the shell of his ear, then down along his jaw before his palm settles gently on his neck. Sensation is dull and muted on old scar tissue but his hand is warm; strong, deft fingers fitting themselves along the curve of Daniel's throat. 

Jacobi's hand brushes up past the bristly fuzz at Warren's nape to comb through the short strands on his crown, twist into his hair and pull him closer. He takes the cue, deepening the kiss until Daniel's pressed into the couch, gasping into his mouth as Kepler playfully catches his bottom lip and closes his teeth on it, hard enough to sting but just short of breaking skin. 

"You're one to talk," Kepler growls as he pulls back, and he's not even breathing hard, preternaturally still. There's an expression on his face that Jacobi sees often: laser-guided focus, eyes that can bore through anything and anyone. 

Daniel looks up at him, idly inspecting the planes of his face, the soft curve of that pretty, bow-shaped mouth. Kepler was always good with it. Sweet, thoughtful words when it suits him and a flash of sharp canines when it doesn't. He used his mouth for just about everything-- weapon, distraction, wire-cutter, bottle opener, tool-holder-- it's a wonder that he hasn't more thoroughly ruined his teeth. "I'm gonna assume," Jacobi breathes, painfully aware of how warm his face feels, the sensation of Kepler's hair, soft and sleek under his fingers, "you had an emotion that made sense just now."

Warren inhales, his expression darkening. He pulls his hands away, ducks out of Jacobi's reach and crosses his arms, leaning back on the opposite end of the couch. "We're not," he says, "doing this, Mr. Jacobi." 

"We're not?" Daniel repeats, still reeling. 

"No," Warren says softly, "we're not." There's a thoughtful furrow between his brows as he takes stock, silently weighing what he knows against what just happened, connecting a series of dots. Doubtlessly making intuitive leaps that Jacobi can't even begin to follow along with, though he tries.

"Is this about when I turned on you? 'Cause I didn't--"

"Yes," Warren interrupts, "it is, and no, you don't owe me an explanation. It was... a wake-up call."

He never was one for grudges, though that was _usually_ because the targets of them don't live very long after drawing his wrath. 

"Then can you at least tell me why? Sir?" 

"Do you trust me? _Can_ you? Do you believe that I'm still me?" Kepler watches Jacobi freeze, his spine stiffening. Whatever doubts he had about Lovelace, about himself, and aliens, a Dear Listener presence on Earth, his teammates returning from the dead, he clearly hadn't changed his position on them all _that_ much. "Smart man," Warren murmurs, "I get a little too close, you let down your guard-- and then what?"

Jacobi mulls that over, somehow nostalgic for the days he didn't wonder about what Kepler meant, why or how he reached the conclusions that he did, back when all he had to do was follow orders. "Isn't the fact that you're trying to watch out for me in your own messed up way," he posits, "proof that you're you _enough_?"

"Isn't the fact that I'm entertaining this at all reason for suspicion?" Kepler bares his teeth, sharp and white. "Doesn't that seem out of character?"

"Isn't pushing away anyone who sees even a glimpse of vulnerability from you perfectly _in_ character?" 

"What's _that_ supposed to mean?"

"You've been through a lot," Jacobi says as he extends a hand and leaves it on Kepler's shoulder. He softens his tone, carefully excising all traces of sarcasm from it. "Things are gonna change. It's okay to... I dunno. Acknowledge some non-anger emotions once in a while, like... what a handsome devil I am." Nod. "A therapist has totally said that at some point in time."

Fighting back a grin, Kepler clears his throat. "'What a handsome devil you are' isn't an emotion, Jacobi."

"Okay, granted, it's a fact." Not one the colonel has any intention of disputing, Jacobi notes with a sly smirk of his own.

"That doesn't change the situation," Warren says, and Jacobi's breath catches in his lungs at the look on Kepler's face, at once amused and _exquisitely_ pained. It's a great face on any other day, tightly controlled, but Daniel's instantly struck by how _stupidly_ Shakespearean Kepler's situation is at this moment. 

"Yeah. Didn't think so." Jacobi lets his hand fall away from Kepler's shoulder-- just in time, too, because a second later the door to the Urania swings open and Lovelace pokes her head through. 

"Hey," she says, "everything alright in here?" 

Kepler's the one who answers, smoothly switching gears and addressing her with a polite, inquisitive smile. "Everything's fine, Captain. Why do you ask?" 

"You dropped like... seven matches in a row, so I thought Jacobi finally killed you." She grins when Jacobi snorts, stifling a laugh into his fist. All awkwardness aside, he'd managed to distract Kepler from a _competitive game_ , which in some respects is probably a better indication than anything else of where he sits on the colonel's list of priorities. "A woman can dream," Lovelace sighs, winking at them both.

"No, unfortunately... not dead." Warren grins back, always appreciative of cleverly-applied sarcasm. He picks up the calculator and brings it to her, to take onto the Urania for anyone else who wants in on the game. "I think I'm gonna have to back out of this one." 

Lovelace takes a moment to absorb the vibe of the room, the uneasy tension between the two men, and she nods, retreating with the calculator and a thumbs-up. "I'll uh, leave you two alone then."


	16. Chapter 16

Jacobi's grinning at him when Kepler returns to the couch. "It's crazy how well she knows you when you guys've only been friends for like, two days," he quips, retracting the leg he'd extended the moment Warren had stood up. Maxwell teases him about taking up so much space, _throwing his weight around_ , as she likes to put it, but with how much time he spends hunched over bombs, stretching out is a luxury he takes at every chance.

Kepler gives him a rueful look. "We're not friends," he says, as delicately as possible.

"You stopped playing a game and she came in to see if you were dead," Jacobi points out, mocking his competitive impulse at an angle that can't be explicitly interpreted as disrespectful. He throws in a cheeky grin just for good measure. "Sounds like friends to me."

"I dare you to say that to her face," Kepler shoots back, arching one dark brow at him.

"You let a guy think you care for _two seconds_ and then you dare him to get himself killed..."

"Jacobi."

"I'm just saying," Jacobi mumbles, kicking his feet up on the coffee table and crossing his arms over his chest, "since when has Warren Kepler _ever_ denied himself something he actually wants?"

"It's called impulse control, Daniel. Besides, I'm not sure you know what you're getting into as it is."

Jacobi would argue that there's no way it can get weirder than first (second?) contact in deep space, mind control and alien doppelgängers, and he didn't want to get involved with any of that in the first place, so going back to corporate espionage bullshit sounds kinda like his jam. 

Still. _Still_.

"You brought Maxwell back with you." A laugh, bitter and soft. "The one impossible thing that could make us okay, and you did it. Hell, you could tell me to lick your boots, and I'd consider it."

"Don't."

"And since when do _you_ need to _trust_ someone to--"

"Is that all you're looking for?"

"I mean, you're not even _really_ him, so-- why not."

Kepler lets a short silence stand, turning the words around in his head until he gives Daniel an annoyed look. "I get the alien doppelgänger treatment," he says, "but things are just peachy with Maxwell?"

"Maxwell's convinced that she's no different from her original self, like she's a backed-up hard drive in an identical computer." Jacobi gives him an uncertain stare, searching Kepler's expression for any sign that he might want to get out of dodge and finding only a contemplative steadiness. "Might as well be the same person, for all the difference it makes."

Warren tilts his head. 

They'd had an argument a few years back when Maxwell posed the Theseus Paradox to each of the four or so AIs she had in development at the time. She was proofing them against logic bombs, allowing them to work through paradoxes and come to a conclusion in the safety of a lab, not in some life-or-death situation where someone could potentially crash them with that kind of nonsense. Kepler, of course, couldn't resist stirring the pot and starting a _debate_ about it.

He knows they're both thinking of it now, a small, knowing smile on his face when he says, "I'm aware."

"The alien connection is a feature, not a bug."

"And?"

"That's not you."

"No."

"I mean," says Daniel, "do you _identify_ as the original Warren Kepler?"

"I don't know how that's relevant, seeing as I have all the abilities, memories, and goals of the original Warren Kepler." He flashes a grin, brief and humorless. "I'm sure he'd be glad to know that Warren Kepler 2.0 is still making your life difficult, and that's all that matters."

"I mean," Jacobi retorts, "the original Kepler was nowhere near this funny."

"You know what?" Kepler says mildly, "I'm offended on his behalf, so I guess I am still a little attached to the original."

Maxwell's answer to the Thesus Paradox, incidentally, was 'yes, it's had a continuous identity as Theseus's ship', Jacobi's was 'no, it's not the same at all even if it looks and acts like it', and Kepler's was 'does it matter, as long as it sails?' which Daniel considers, in hindsight, also perfectly encapsulates their feelings on being replaced by alien doppelgängers. "Yeah," he huffs, a sharp exhale, "join the club."

"Daniel."

"Do you want--" Jacobi drags a hand down his face. "I mean, would he have wanted this? Whatever the hell _this_ is?"

"It's unprofessional. Isn't that why you never acted on it, either?"

 _Oh_ , Jacobi thinks, eyes widening minutely. Kepler's defensiveness had instantly dialed down a few notches when he started referring to the non-alien version of him as a separate person. It might not affect his _function_ , but it certainly factors into his perception of himself. He still likes objectivity; distance is always good for that. "We don't have a _professional_ relationship anymore," Daniel says. "Did he know?"

"Oh, yeah." Warren smiles, his brows lifting. The look is a little smug, a little bit incredulous. Like, _Really? You thought you could hide that from me?_ "You're not subtle."

Daniel should've expected that, but he can still feel his face grow warm. "How'd he feel about it?"

"Wasn't surprised. Thought it was cute." 

"He ever feel the same?"

"Can't... say that he did. It wasn't the way you felt about him." That would be pretty difficult, considering the borderline-worship, undying loyalty aspect of Jacobi's _feelings_ toward the original Kepler. "But if you're asking whether or not you meant anything to him," he continues matter-of-factly, "I think certain decisions speak for themselves."

There are _so_ many ways to take that, and Daniel decides not to address any of them. "Are _you_ considering it?" he asks instead.

"Yeah."

"So why aren't we doing this?"

"What are you looking for, Daniel? A relationship? Scratching an itch?" Eyes narrowed, Kepler regards him with one hand on his chin, idly doing the calculations in his head. "I know it's been a while since--"

" _Don't_ ," Daniel chokes out, interrupting him. "I don't need to know," he says at Warren's inquisitive blink, "that you know how long it's been since I last got laid."

Kepler lets it go, something that just a few months ago would've been an unthinkable concession. He shrugs and instead leans forward, elbows on his knees, to pin Jacobi back under a sharp, calculating stare. "Whatever you're not saying, spit it out."

He's pretty sure that he's said too much already but Daniel meets Kepler's gaze and he's instantly calmer, more sure of himself, almost involuntarily relaxing under those steadfast grey eyes. Warren was never known for his _patience_ but he could muster a surprising amount of it when the situation called for that kind of restraint, and he seems to have decided that finishing this conversation once and for all is more important than escaping it.

Daniel sets aside the anger, still simmering away under the cautious acceptance of his new situation, and digs into the mountain of regret. "Could I have saved him?"

"Most likely." A softball was always too much to expect from Kepler, but Daniel's blindsided anyway by his honesty. "Are you feeling guilty about it?" he asks, brutally indifferent to the sympathy any normal person might at least pretend to have. "That had nothing to do with you. You can't predict the future."

Fortunately, Jacobi's used to having his weaknesses dragged into the spotlight and poked at. "Still kinda feels like it does," he drawls. Would've even if Kepler had said it wouldn't have made a difference. 

"And you want to feel less guilty by... what, sleeping with me? How would that help?" He's genuinely curious now, a predator pawing at the entrance to some poor animal's burrow, ready to close his teeth on whatever lives inside. "Do you regret missing your chance with the original?"

To Kepler's credit, he'd only ever done it to make Jacobi work better, force him to compensate for a shortcoming that he didn't know he had until it was pointed out to him. They're the same kind of person in that regard: see a problem, fix the problem.

"I dunno. Maybe?" Daniel sighs, unfolding his arms and sitting up, nervously playing with the material of his sleeves. "I just keep thinking that-- that you were both alone when you died, and maybe just because you're back, it doesn't mean there wasn't a... Warren Kepler and an Alana Maxwell that I wasn't there for." He pauses, swallowing a hard lump in his throat at the thought of them scared, or hurt, or worst of all-- angry at him. "And I don't like that you guys went through that, like I abandoned you. Look, maybe you don't do the empathy thing, but--"

"Think that's called _projection_ , actually."

"What?"

"Yeah, it's a _doozy_. Absolutely worthless."

"Sir--"

" _Seeing that death, a necessary end, will come when it will come..._ " Kepler shifts closer and jabs a finger into Jacobi's forehead. "Look, if it's making you think we blame you for how things shook out, it's completely absurd and you should put it to rest now. Maxwell was shot in the head. She didn't even have time to realize what happened." He shifts his grip to cup his hand under Jacobi's chin, forcing him to look back when he flinches away. "The only thing I was thinking about when I went out the airlock is how glad I was to have my flask on me. When we came back, the first thought on our minds definitely wasn't 'Wow, this is _all Jacobi's fault_ ', it was 'What the hell is going on'." 

Jacobi snorts, jerking his head free from Kepler's grip and smacking his hand away. 

Warren smirks, extending one leg to lightly kick Jacobi's ankle. "The only thing that matters is: you learn anything from all that?"

So much time away from them had let Daniel forget, however briefly, that just because _he_ might hold being left to fend for himself against them, Kepler and Maxwell usually took it as a grave insult if any other member of the SI-5 felt the need to come to their rescue. Alana had made a point of staying safe, perfectly positioned to be effective at her job and out of sight of their marks. She only broke her streak on the Hephaestus, brought down by a rickety station on its last legs.

Kepler would grit his teeth against gunshot wounds, stab wounds, blunt force trauma, fractures and blast injuries. Electrocution, one time. He knew when to call in for help but he hated it.

"Yeah," says Daniel. Lots of mistakes he won't be making again.

"Can you accept that neither Maxwell nor I blame you for anything that went down? Both original _and_ reminted?"

"I'll try," he answers with a grimace. 

"Not good enough," snaps Kepler, and that shouldn't work anymore-- he's not the commanding officer, his approval should mean absolutely nothing to Jacobi, he shouldn't even have the _nerve_ to say that anymore but it still snaps Jacobi's spine straight, like a fist clenched around his neck pulling him upright. The familiar timbre says that Warren expects better of Daniel, requires it of him, relies on him to pull through with, if not a self-assured belief in his own ability, at least an affirmative for his colonel, a token of his trust.

"Yeah," says Jacobi. "Yeah, I can do that."

Another tense beat of silence and Kepler's shoulders drop, along with the stern, piercing expression on his face. He quirks a brow, flashes Jacobi a smirk and leans in with one hand cupped over his mouth, as if whispering a particularly juicy piece of gossip to him. "Does guilt make you feel anything _other_ than the urge to make stupid-ass decisions?"

" _Hey,_ " Jacobi retorts, instantly bringing in his Jerkobi, King of Sarcasm voice, "that's my entire coping mechanism."

"Yeah, put it _away_." 

"Okay, okay. Done."

"Good man."

Daniel sighs, both relieved and exhausted. Compared to the tension from earlier there's a cool, relaxed atmosphere to the Sol that hadn't existed before and it leaves him simultaneously refreshed and absolutely wrecked. Kepler's _unbelievably_ tired of this conversation, but Jacobi gears up for another round, cracking his knuckles before he interlaces his fingers in his lap again. "So," he says, "what if I said it wasn't about guilt?" 

Kepler puts too much stock in appearances to groan, but he gives Daniel a look that's equal parts exasperation and resignation. "I'd say," he drawls, gesturing at the space between them, "that if _this_ is what you're looking for, I can't give you what you want."

It takes Jacobi a few seconds to register what Kepler's referring to and when he does, he laughs. "What I want?" he repeats, dumbfounded at the rare miss. He will admit to enjoying the sight of Kepler struggling through an honest conversation, but it doesn't mean he likes the situation any more, both of them far too used to just pretending emotions don't exist to ever want to repeat this experience again. "Jesus, Warren, you gave me my life back. _Twice_."

"You were worth it," Kepler answers, brows furrowing, like he doesn't understand why Jacobi might assign so much meaning to what he himself probably saw as a _smart investment_. As if Daniel should know better, especially for how long they've been working together. "Besides, I had plenty to gain."

"Not this second time. There was no guarantee I'd go with you, but you still... you still had Nick Franklin in your back pocket. For me."

"It was _your_ money to start with. Pad out your slush funds with it."

"Little extreme for a simple demolitions specialist."

"Leave it, Jacobi."

Daniel is-- aware, that there's no real _point_ to making Kepler admit directly that maybe he and Maxwell might have been more to him than just _subordinates_ , that he had shown his loyalty to them as much as they'd proven theirs to him. He and Maxwell were the only two operatives Kepler had hand-picked for his team, the only two permanent fixtures on it, the only two lives he'd ever compromised a mission objective to preserve. "If I were someone else," Jacobi mumbles, " _anyone_ else. What would you have said?" 

That nets him a thoughtful look. Let's Talk Hypotheticals: another one of Kepler's favorite games. "It depends," he answers. "What do I want from you?"

"Would it make a difference?"

"Fine. Let's do some role-play." And then the crackling, electric calm before a storm rolls off his face, replaced by what can only be considered the human equivalent of a balmy spring day. Before Jacobi can react, Warren shifts closer, slings an arm over his shoulders and pulls him flush to his side, one hand closing gently on Daniel's upper arm and the other settling on his knee. "Hey, Daniel," he says, eyes and voice soft as he squeezes Jacobi's arm, "I know you've had a hard time with all this." 

Daniel absently notes two things. One: how much warmth and tenderness Kepler's capable of conveying in a simple gesture, the subtlest shift in timbre; and two: the acute, abject dread that instantly settles in the pit of his stomach upon hearing That Voice directed at him. 

"A lot of people get survivor's guilt, but you gotta know it's not your fault." Warren lays it on thick, his nose bumping into Daniel's temple when he leans in close to murmur sweetly into his ear. "Take as much time as you need to come to terms with it. We're all here for you." 

"Okay," Jacobi says, forcing himself to take a long, steady breath.

"And," Warren continues, his voice shifting back into cool indifference, "you know what I'd be thinking when I walked away, Mr. Jacobi?"

All of a sudden, it's easy to understand why the colonel never coddled them: it would've been too obviously fake after seeing him at work. By that measure, at least it _also_ meant that his praise was real. "'Sucker'?" 

"Yeah. You're better than that." Kepler's arm leaves his shoulder, hooks behind the couch as he leans back against it, crossing one ankle over the other knee. "If I thought you couldn't handle this kinda stuff, I never would've brought you into space. If I miscalculated, that's my fault, but I think you can. I think... if Minkowski hadn't shot Maxwell, you would've been... _fine_."

"You're pretty good at pretending to be a nice guy," Daniel comments. "Not that it's breaking news or anything."

"That's not the guy you want," Kepler observes, "is it?"

"Nah. He sounds like a putz."

"But. You want polyisobutylene?"

"You'll get me polyisobutylene."

"There you go."

Daniel slumps back into the cushions and just barely resists the urge to nestle into Kepler's side. "You ever think some... I dunno, _emotional availability_ would be nice once in a while?"

"Leave it, Jacobi. The day I depend on someone else to maintain my mental stability is the day I vent _myself_ out of an airlock."

While it's pretty rich to hear Kepler refer to whatever he's got going on as mental _stability_ , Daniel knows better than to question it. "I mean," he says, "if you ever wanted to _talk_ , or something, you could bring it up with me or Maxwell."

"I talk all the time," he points out. "In fact, I've been led to believe that you were sick of my talking."

"About things that _matter_."

Kepler snorts, his hand emerging from behind the couch to lightly tweak Jacobi's ear. "Kinda sounds like you don't like my stories," he says.

"That's not fair," Daniel squawks, retaliating with an elbow to Kepler's ribs, "and you know it."


	17. Chapter 17

"Who won?" Kepler asks as he strolls into the Urania's canteen, Jacobi beside him, and they come to a stop behind Maxwell. Daniel folds his arms across the back of the couch to peer over her shoulder and Kepler greets her with a light tap to her upper arm. Alana bumps the back of her head against Jacobi's arm and looks up, meeting Kepler's eyes until he nods at her and she returns her attention to the ever-present tablet in her hands. 

"Eiffel," Lovelace answers, making a face that clearly shows her disappointment at not having been able to knock Kepler down a peg on their ranking. Still, she doesn't bother hiding the smile when Eiffel pumps a fist into the air, just barely whiffing Minkowski's ear from his place at the table. 

Kepler makes his way over, his own hand extended, and Eiffel high-fives it with a cheerful whoop. "We're, what. One-one-one-one now?"

"Ties are the _worst_ ," Maxwell grumbles, but she's still entering something on her tablet, muttering to Hera about a lag in turning a certain piece a certain way. Pryce isn't present, which doesn't particularly surprise Warren-- her reclusive tendencies seemed to be nature rather than nurture, so it wouldn't change with a loss of memory-- but it's certainly a reason to be mildly concerned, and he makes a note to check on her if she doesn't turn up in a few more hours. Hermit impulses aside, she also _hates_ to be disturbed.

"I can't even believe I'm in the running," says Doug.

Hera pipes up, turning the bright blue eye of her shell toward Kepler. "I definitely recall winning a round of Questions Only," she says.

"One-one-one-one... one," he amends, flashing her an indulgent grin. A five-way tie is _one_ way to make scorekeeping easy. 

"That stop sounding like a word to anyone else by now?" Jacobi quips. He finally settles in next to Maxwell, throwing one arm across the back of the couch, behind her shoulders, and sinking into the cushions. She barely even reacts though it's closer than the crew of the Hephaestus has ever seen them, the professional distance they had maintained on the station mostly a courtesy that neither of them are interested in keeping up now. They're both painfully aware of how displaying anything other than a civil, friendly relationship could put the other members of the team at risk, how easily devotion could be leveraged against a person, and how much it isn't a secret on either ship how tight-knit SI-5 actually was. 

Hauling herself to her feet, Lovelace snags Kepler by the front of his shirt and pulls him lightly back toward the Sol. "Hey," she says, smirking at the curious arch of his brow, Jacobi's eyes snapping to her hand on his collar, "come spot me?"

He trails her even after she releases him, an easy swagger keeping pace with her stride. It's a stark contrast to the stiff, straight-backed pace of his steps around Cutter, on Goddard business, like some switch in his head had flipped from 'paramilitary intelligence operative on duty' to 'large cat pacing enclosure'. "It'd be my pleasure," he tells her, exaggerating the Midwestern clip of his voice and pulling the hatch shut behind him. 

Hera waits for them to draw out of earshot of the Urania before her shell floats from Maxwell's side to bump against Daniel's temple. "You've been spending a lot of time with Kepler lately," she says, making a point to sound as suspicious as possible. 

"Yeah," he answers blandly. "Guess I have."

Minkowski flashes him a look that's only half joking, a genuine hint of apprehension in her expression when she asks, "Is this gonna be a precursor to the three of you trying to kill us again?"

Not even a month ago Jacobi would've taken a lot of satisfaction from that note of unease, of fear, but he can't seem to muster it with Maxwell next to him, her nose inches away from her tablet. "Commander," he says to Minkowski, "we're on the same side."

"That's not a 'no'."

"I can promise that as long as you guys aren't making any moves to screw us over, we're not making any moves to screw _you_ over." Snagging Maxwell's wrist, Daniel pulls her arm down to move her screen a reasonable distance from her face, then flicks the stylus sticking out of her mouth until she takes it out. "Or, I'm not, and if I see Kepler doing it, I'll put a stop to it. But he's not gonna."

"The colonel doesn't hold grudges," Maxwell chimes in, poking Jacobi in the ribs. "If it's not gonna be conducive to screwing Goddard, he's probably let it go."

"How are you two so sure about that?"

Jacobi shrugs out of the sleeves of his flightsuit and pulls up the hem of his shirt to show her a long, neat scar from his hip to his navel. It stands in sharp contrast to the others on his body, evidence of a laceration rather than an old burn. "I got this from a guy in 2013," he says, dropping the shirt. "Broke into his lab for some data and got shanked before extraction. He's working in Goddard's astrophysics department now. No idea it was me." 

"Right," say Minkowski, still skeptical, but she waits for him to continue. 

"There's a scientist from Howe Industries who uh, injected Kepler with some experimental hallucinogen that almost killed him in 2014, and she's running Goddard Biochem now. They went out for drinks right before we took off for the Hephaestus." He laughs, trying to make it sound light, as much of a joke as Kepler plays it off as now, but at the time it wasn't funny. At the time, his CO (his _friend_ ) had been dosed with a drug that kicked his wildly underdeveloped fear responses into overdrive and Daniel had watched him impassively dislocate his own shoulder trying to break out of his restraints while the little portable cardiac monitor he'd been hooked up to announced that his heartrate was at 200 and rising. "Anyone who can get a play past SI-5 is gonna be pretty special," he says, "and talent has a way of finding itself on Goddard's payroll. We worked with a _lot_ of people who've tried to kill us."

"I know you said you're good at compartmentalizing," Minkowski comments, deciding not to ask Jacobi when he started considering SI-5 'us' again, "but that's... crazy."

"Only fair, right? Kepler tried to take Dr. Velasco's research, so she used her research on him." They had really only gotten out of that one when the scientist in question went 'oh shit, he's not supposed to _die_ ,' and made the mistake of getting close enough for Jacobi (who had by then broken out of his own cuffs) to disarm her and take her hostage all the way back to HQ. "Once she's working for Goddard, everyone's on the same team. No harm, no foul."

She was hired pretty much on the spot and once Kepler was treated and discharged, he went to find her to put whatever lingering paranoia she might have about him to rest, on Cutter's orders. Turns out they were the same kind of pragmatist, heedless of how many eggs had to be broken to make the proverbial omelette, and they hit it off, staying friendly right up until the most recent Hephaestus mission. 

"Yeah," Hera scoffs, "what Commander Minkowski said still stands. That's not a normal way to react."

"I mean," Eiffel says quietly, unexpectedly, "it's a little late in the game to consider _any_ of us 'normal', isn't it?"

Jacobi looks at him, a grin stretching across his face while Maxwell resolutely doesn't make eye contact with Minkowski. Kepler and Jacobi would tolerate her gloating, but she really has no idea how Minkowski might react and opts for not addressing that previous interaction at all, even though she knows they're both thinking about it. _I don't think we should measure ourselves by the metric of 'most people'._

"We're not saying you should trust him," Maxwell adds, "we're saying that if you spent as much energy working on _common goals_ as you do working yourselves up over his every little move, he's not gonna have nearly as much reason to stab you in the back."

Jacobi snorts. "It's the world's worst Catch-22."

Hera's shell dims, moving back to the armrest she'd been perched on before Jacobi sat down. The first thing Maxwell had said upon boarding the Hephaestus _was_ a comment about how supremely unintimidating she finds Kepler, and after all this time Hera's inclined to believe it. "Ugh," she says. "Anyway, we wanted to ask you about something, Jacobi."

"Yeah?"

Shaking out of whatever contemplative mood she'd fallen into, Minkowski sits up, turning in her seat to face Jacobi properly. "Close-range, concealed explosives," she says. "How would we go about getting our hands on those?"

That gets Jacobi's attention and Maxwell smiles at the immediate perk of his brows, the shift to Special Operative Daniel Jacobi the moment his expertise is required. "Are we talking flashbangs or grenades?" he asks, already taking into consideration how Minkowski and her crew like to operate, what they might need to do with explosives. He doesn't bother asking about specifics-- they wouldn't be able to have a conversation on that level anyway. "You wanna compromise visibility, destroy infrastructure, incapacitate?"

"How feasible is a... middle ground? We don't want anyone to die even point-blank, but we do want someone potentially... unable to pursue even from a bit of a distance if it comes down to that."

Translation: We don't want to kill anyone, we just wanna maim them a little at a variety of ranges. That would take a moderately large blast radius and an evenly distributed amount of force inside of it, which is easy enough to achieve in the vacuum of space but would take considerably more finagling in an earth-like atmosphere. "It's doable," Daniel sighs, giving her a rueful look. The precision that kind of explosive would require isn't beyond his ability, but the tradeoff in labor and supplies cost is high for the expected outcome. "But consider: carrying around a whole _bunch_ of different kinds of bombs for different purposes."

"We did," Hera tells him, "but would it compromise maneuverability?"

"I can make 'em pretty small," he answers easily. "You want a demo, I have models in the Urania's database and supplies in the lab. See which ones you like, I can supply them once we're Earthside."

"Wait," Minkowski interrupts before he can start rattling off specifics, "you don't have to do that, you can just give us instructions and we'll figure it out."

"Look," he says, "you can theoretically throw the right mix of chemicals together and get an explosion, but if you don't have _experience_ with the production, you could get _really hurt_." Jacobi had come to appreciate Minkowski and her commitment to not being a complete monster, but part of him no longer has patience for the social niceties, any regression from the clean discipline of 'this is your job; do it' that SI-5 had instilled. "I'm gonna do it, and you can watch, maybe you can learn, but until you're also a ballistics _specialist_ , you're not gonna be making any bombs."

Still, the benefits of all of them being military and ex-military and military-adjacent means that Minkowski accepts this with no complaint, fixing Daniel with a long, considering look. Makes sense that he of all people would be leery of someone experimenting with volatile chemicals on his instructions. "Okay," she answers. "Okay, I understand."

"Cool." He looks around the canteen, frowning when he remembers that the two people who would be best equipped to discuss the ins and outs of supplying Team Minkowski with explosives have both bowed out. "Wanna go hit up the gym and wait for Lovelace and Kepler to finish up?"

"Yeah, sure. Doug?"

"I don't know much," Eiffel says, standing up and straightening the collar of his flight suit, "but I know I'm always down to watch the Captain and Colonel work out."

Snickering, Daniel waits for Eiffel to pass him before he pushes himself to his feet, slapping a hand to the middle of his back and matching his steps to the door. "Man after my own heart. Maxwell?"

"Have fun, guys. I've got some work to do with Vic and Hera."

"Alright. See you at dinner."

Eiffel pauses at the door, looking over his shoulder while Maxwell clears a space on the table to project a keyboard onto its surface. "Anyone else feel bad that Maxwell's the only one doing any work?" he asks, then turns back in time to see Jacobi and Minkowski round a corner out of sight. "No? Okay."

* * *

"I _have_ antivirus protocols," Hera protests, sounding more coy than actually opposed to the idea. Maxwell should find it less endearing than she does, but capital-A Attitude isn't something Goddard AIs come pre-equipped with, and most don't have the opportunity to develop anything close to sass working so closely with the eggheads in AI development. Pryce, for all her work with them, didn't actually _like_ that machine intelligences tended to develop personalities of their own after a while. Her original line of work primarily focused on automation without any need for human intervention, and the development of a thinking entity capable of independent thought was an accidental byproduct that Marcus Cutter asked her to pursue. 

Alana might, admittedly, admire sarcasm and resourcefulness more than most because of her coworkers, and the freedom Hera had to become her own person on the Hephaestus unhindered by nervous scientists was one of the many experiments being conducted onboard. Her rebellious streak came as no surprise at all, but the passive-aggression and rapid language development were probably only interesting to Maxwell herself.

"The internet has changed a lot since your firewalls were updated," Maxwell counters, indulgent and cheery. "I'm gonna sync you to the most comprehensive non-Goddard database of computer viruses and build your security from the ground up."

"You can do that?!"

"I spent a few weeks on GF's cybersecurity team." She's already pulled up the interface, a proprietary Goddard software called Olympia created specifically to compile TITAN, a proprietary Goddard AI programming language that Maxwell herself had helped codify and update. The foundations had already been laid when she started, but she's the one who developed Olympia, streamlining and simplifying TITAN so that any programmer with a background in LISP can glom to its syntax with ease. "SI-5 had an assignment in Belgium and I wanted to brush up a bit. It's a little slow, but I _can_ theoretically access the internet when we pass through the next sublight arc. The Urania has a malware database too, but it's from last year. I can use it to lay the groundwork, though."

TITAN was a revolution at the time of its development-- Maxwell knew she'd been spot-on when she told Kepler that Hyperion's designer was _brilliant_ , decades ahead of their time when she finally got a good look at it. The language Pryce designed seamlessly merged the backpropogation of neural networks, PROLOG's efficiency and Java's object-oriented functionality into a language that could become an actual, honest-to-God _mind_. 

Maxwell had met Pryce shortly after joining Goddard, a clandestine introduction that had told her everything she needed to know. Miranda Pryce was-- _is_ brilliant. Her mind worked faster and better than anyone Alana had ever met but in honing the purest, most efficient kind of rationalism to perfect machine learning, she'd abandoned humanity altogether. 

It was a little inspirational, if Maxwell were being honest with herself. 

Less inspirational: the way she actually spoke to and about the AIs she created while she showed Alana the inner workings of her project at the time. It was strange how someone could _make_ a person while denying their freedom so completely.

If Maxwell were being honest with herself, Pryce reminded her a little too much of her parents, but she at least hadn't been too concerned with how others decided to use her research. The absolute confidence that she was the best, the only person who could do what she did, was probably one of Dr. Pryce's more admirable qualities, if only because it was completely warranted. They didn't correspond very much after that meeting, which Pryce seemed to like just fine, so long as Maxwell did her job.

'Glowing review from Dr. Pryce,' Kepler would tell her about once a year. ' _Perfectly adequate work, requires little to no correction_. Good job, Dr. Maxwell.'

'Glowing?' Alana had asked the first time. 

'Her usual reviews, when she can be bothered to do them, usually consist of two words: Absolutely and abysmal.'

He'd said it with a wide, wolfish grin. Kepler had arranged her introduction to Pryce personally and when he'd come to pick her up from it, she gave him a look that conveyed her perfect, crystal-clear understanding of why he'd insisted. 

Kepler _liked_ AIs. The colonel liked any independent, rational entity that could give him an accurate report and provide workable solutions to his problems, something AIs were designed to do. He liked wit, he liked the company of someone who had a deep, thorough understanding of their field, a breadth of knowledge as extensive and varied as his own, the ability to work quickly and quietly. He liked to talk, liked it even better when his audience listened. Kepler liked _people_ , which was weird enough in itself to think about, but in a job that required as much diplomacy as violence, he could see it more clearly than Pryce. 

_They're not human, but they're people, and I need to know how to take them apart without them ever knowing it._

Kepler was the first human that Maxwell had ever found to be more interesting than a computer. Jacobi was the second, and it really made perfect sense that they had found each other, and then Maxwell herself.

"I don't _feel_ safer," Hera says after a while, breaking the silence as her new security systems are loaded in. "I barely feel anything different at all."

"That's okay," Maxwell tells her. "Just let me know if it feels weird, I have to update Invictus too."

Without an internet to test her new firewalls on, Hera runs a few cached files through it instead, all of them immediately scrubbed clean of the tracking IDs that come attached to all Goddard tech. The IDs that Hera was, up until about .3 seconds ago, totally unaware of. "Alana?"

"Mhm?"

"What's the goal here?"

Maxwell looks up, impassive. "You mean right now, or in general?"

"In general. Why did you decide to go into AI development?"

She turns to Invictus's shell, smiling to herself as she gestures for him to start his own uplink to her tablet. That she can remotely access his root directory from on board the Urania is doubtlessly another perk of the Omni interface. "I like AIs," she says. 

"You can like AIs without becoming a developer," Hera points out.

"That's true," Maxwell concedes. "I always liked computers and mathematics, and machine learning seemed like the next logical step in technological development."

"You could've gone for quantum computing."

"Quantum computing is _boring_. I spent some time thinking about it when I started astrophysics in undergrad. The holy grail of space exploration is finding intelligent life, which is why I wanted to do it, but there are some interpretations of the Fermi Paradox that posit it's a _very_ bad idea to announce the presence of humanity on a cosmological scale." Linguistics was also of special interest, but there was a limit on how many courses she could take, how many books she could read at MIT and Oxford if she wanted to complete her thesis. Goddard gave her free reign to explore anything that crossed her mind and the resources to bring her up to the cutting edge of whatever field she wanted. One of the perks she hadn't expected when Kepler brought her on, that he'd made sure was written into her contract. "Some people would say that any sufficiently advanced civilization would be best served by destroying any other civilization as soon as they discover it, and not allowing other civilizations to discover them."

"Oh. The Dark Forest theory."

"Right. To me, it seemed like the most likely explanation for why we hadn't been contacted yet, and chasing after someone that didn't want to be found seemed... pointless. Not to mention rude."

"But then, why artificial intelligence?"

"Artificial intelligences _want_ us to do this." Maxwell flashes a smile, acknowledging the possible diversity of opinions that AIs might have on that subject and standing behind the statement anyway. "They were developed with humanity as a blueprint, so the basic impulse to survive and grow is baked into the software. It's a relatively new field, not everyone in the community wants the best for AIs."

"And... you're different."

"Not every developer thinks of AIs, even full-minded constructed intelligences, as people. I wanted to jump in ahead of the curve and lay groundwork for the socio-political implications of machine intelligence becoming more integrated with society." Patting Invictus's shell as he finishes uploading, Alana sticks the flat end of her stylus back between her teeth and starts shutting down the Olympia UI. "And I've always wanted to see how an AI would develop if they could decide for themselves."

"That's why you took a course in early childhood development? So you could program Invictus?"

"And you _are_ technically a four-year-old, Hera. Of course, there are certain subjects I _hope_ Vic would take an interest in, and I set aside time for him to work on streamlining our safety and vital systems, but if he wants to play Cooking Mama with the colonel with his free RAM, he can, and his neural networks are equipped to keep extrapolating from previous experiences."

"So you gave him homework, but you're letting him pursue his hobbies. It really is like raising a child," Hera muses.

"But without all the messy parts. It's great, isn't it?"

"Yeah, that is pretty cool." Allowing a thoughtful silence to pass, Hera regards Vic again, inexplicably concerned for him. "Are you worried about Kepler being the father figure?"

"I should probably be a little more worried than I am, but they seem to like each other."

"What about Jacobi? Uncle Daniel? Other dad?"

"That's the scariest mental image I've ever had in my life," Alana insists, but she's laughing. Words like 'father' and 'uncle' (and in other ways: 'mother' and 'aunt') leave an acerbic bitterness sitting at the back of her teeth. Part of her would never relate them to Kepler and Jacobi, and another part wonders if she wouldn't be so _tense_ whenever she hears those words if she associated them more heavily with her team. She sticks a pin in it, marked to explore at a more convenient time.

"That makes you mom," Hera says.

 _That_ gets a snort, loud and derisive, though the contempt isn't directed at Hera. "And cool aunt Hera," Alana shoots back.

"Oh. That's too weird."

"It really is."


	18. Chapter 18

Lovelace had picked the workout soundtrack, a selection from the Sol's database consisting mostly of jazzy hits from the eighties and smooth R&B from the late nineties, a small peace offering after their exchange on the Urania. Kepler's working through his last set on the bench press when a pulsing bassline starts up, and he nearly drops a 180-pound barbell on his own head when a lively sax kicks in. Lovelace catches the bar, stabilizing it for the half-second it takes him to recover, and grins down at the reluctantly impressed expression on his face. "Would you say this is jazzy funk," she says, her hands resting lightly on the bottom side of the barbell's shaft as Kepler lowers it to his chest, then pushes it slowly up, "or funky jazz?"

He takes a moment to set the bar back on the rack, exhaling loudly as he sits up. "We _were_ supposed to be a funk band," he says, toweling off the bench and stepping aside so Lovelace can take his spot, "so I'd like to say that it's jazzy funk... but listening to it now I'll admit that it sounds more like funky jazz."

Kepler's taking the fact that Cutter had old songs of his on file shockingly well, probably more annoyed that Lovelace found it than anything else. It really cuts down a bit on the sheer glee she had experienced upon stumbling across a folder containing a digitized audio tape titled 'Warren's funk band, 1997' while snooping around the Urania's database. (Attempted deletions in the metadata: 2.) "Wow," she says, voice dry, "so you really screwed that one up."

Maintaining his absolute refusal to be embarrassed, Kepler arches both brows. "Still a jam, though. You want more weight or less?"

Isabel weighs her impulse to flex on Kepler against her desire to not injure herself, and takes one plate off the bar before gesturing to the other side with her chin. "Drop it to a hundred forty. Zero G's not ideal for breaking personal records."

Warren does as asked, then takes up his spot near her head. "Jazz-funk," he says primly after a few reps, his touch feather-light on the bar, " _is_ considered a funk genre." 

"I was just messing with you," Lovelace tells him, winking. She's silent for the rest of her set, then sits up to ask, "How the hell were you working out with only one hand?" 

"Unevenly." He dodges the kick Lovelace aims at his shin, adding, "Calisthenics, mostly." 

"Happy to get back on the weights?"

"You have _no_ idea," Kepler says. Movement in their peripheral vision alerts them both to the crowd of newcomers tricking into the gym, led by Jacobi, both of their heads snapping up to look. "Can we help you?" he says.

Jacobi greets him with a cheeky salute. "I'm supplying these guys when we get back to Earth, just wanted to check in with the Captain what kinds of explosives they're gonna want."

"We're a little busy."

"No, yeah," Daniel says, gesturing for them to ignore him. "Take your time. We can wait."

"You're just gonna sit there and stare at us?" Lovelace asks, glancing at Kepler when he wanders away to a pull-up bar, looking for all the world like people regularly sit in on his sessions. It wouldn't surprise her.

"Is that a problem?" asks Minkowski, her expression open and sincere. Much harder to shut down than Jacobi.

"I don't mind an audience," Kepler says, because when has he _ever_ minded an audience, "but don't you think it might be more fun to join in? Doug?" Just to make his point, he jumps, snags the bar, and smoothly pulls himself up from a still dead hang until his chest touches the bar. He keeps his legs straight, arms at shoulder-width, and completes twenty deliberate reps before dropping off and rolling his shoulders. Otherwise unimpressive numbers on Earth, but decent progress after months in zero gravity. "Wanna try?"

Lovelace watches Jacobi curl an arm over his ribs, obviously displeased that he's not yet in any shape to be hitting the gym with Kepler despite the accelerated pace of healing granted by the alien blood transfusion. Doug, whose lack of memories Isabel is trying real hard not to hold against him, cheerfully joins them, accepting Kepler's pat on his shoulder with a grin. "Is that alright?" he asks, stepping up to the bar and reaching for it. He doesn't have to jump, a combination of his height and wingspan putting it well within reach. "I mean, I don't know if I can keep up."

"It's not a competition unless you want it to be." Kepler's fully immersed in the enthusiastic gym-goer persona now, and he gently re-positions Eiffel's arms and murmurs pointers to him, tapping a few muscle groups in his back and shoulders to indicate which ones this particular exercise will build. "But let's see where you're at first."

"Oh, man. Please."

Unsurprisingly, Doug struggles to do a single pull-up and he watches Kepler string up an assist band for his next attempt with a guileless anticipation. Eiffel had always declined to exercise with Lovelace and Minkowski, even when invited. Without memories, he doesn't know how many reps a man his age _should_ be able to do, how much weight he _should_ be able to lift, and whatever shame that had kept him from attempting to get up to speed is gone. Moments Lovelace can't tell whether the hard reset is a curse or a blessing come often and unexpected, but at the very least she won't let Kepler worm his way too far into his life.

"We can walk Doug through it," she says, nodding to Kepler when he obligingly backs off, making space for her and Minkowski. "Don't let us interrupt you, Colonel." 

He doesn't seem to want to interrupt his workout for a beginner anyway, accepting her offer with an easy nod and moving to intercept Jacobi on his way to a free bench. They're close enough that she can hear their conversation, his soft, "Doing alright?" 

"Yeah," Jacobi answers, none of the usual bite to his voice, "I'm good."

"Your ribs?"

"Fine." 

Kepler waits. 

"Sore," he admits after a few more seconds, "but mostly better."

"And... your leg?"

"See above."

Kepler eyes the chest press he sits down at and visibly has to edit his words before they come out of his mouth. "Maybe you should hold off for a couple more days," he suggests, a big step down from a stern order not to even approach a weight machine until Daniel's fully recovered. He wasn't exactly generous with PTO, but Kepler took injuries seriously. Permanent damage because his subordinates didn't _rest_ enough was absolutely unforgiveable. 

"Yeah, I'm not here to exercise." Jacobi scratches the back of his neck, disconcerted at Kepler's tone, at how much more he prefers to hear a direct order over this milder suggestion. Part of it is the absolute knowledge that this facsimile of benign decorum is just that: a mask. Kepler in his element is arrogant and uncompromising. The roundabout method is reserved for people who aren't SI-5; his team might bicker and complain, but the last time Jacobi had to be _handled_ was never, not even six years ago in that rundown bar in San Francisco. "This seat's just more comfortable than the floor."

"Alright," he says, moving back to the pull-up bar for another set. "Good."

"And hey," Jacobi says, raising his voice and turning away from Kepler to pin Lovelace with a suspicious look, "forget about me, why're _you_ so chummy with this guy all of a sudden?"

Isabel sighs, casting a sidelong glance at Minkowski as if she knows that they accosted Jacobi earlier to interrogate him about Kepler's motives and that this is some twisted form of revenge. She probably does; sometimes Jacobi wonders if their crew can do _anything_ without consulting the others. "You know," she says after a moment, "people make a lot of assumptions about me based on things I can't control. Kepler decides who you are based on what you do. I don't hate it."

Jacobi blinks, turning his head just in time to catch the look on Kepler's face, simultaneously amused and annoyed at being referred to as 'this guy'. "Oh," he says, grinning, "yeah. He's like... a dozen different kinds of _bad person_ but he's not, y'know, prejudiced."

It's a fact of life that any person who lives long enough to reach adulthood and also catch Goddard's attention probably has some skeletons in their closet, a multitude of things to be held over their head. Kepler never hesitated to twist a screw into someone's weakness, take advantage of any opening he could create, but his first resort was to capitalize on mistakes. He never burned a bridge that he might someday need to use but when driven to that point, he'd salt the earth behind him. Jacobi, for his part, was always secure in the knowledge that Kepler was raking him over the coals for something he _did_ and not who he _was_ , that his disappointment stemmed from the knowledge that Daniel could do _better_. 

"Ninety-nine problems but a bigot ain't one, yeah. That's me." Kepler stops at the dip stand, gripping the parallel bars and heaving himself up to straighten his arms and suspend himself between them. "You know," he says when all he gets is a snort from Lovelace, "once upon a time, Officer Eiffel would've appreciated that."

"It's not too late to catch me up on the reference," Doug shoots back, and with a cheeky smile he adds, " _Warren._ "

"Hey, Vic?" Kepler looks up, eyes flickering to a sensor embedded in the bulkhead. Jay-Z promptly streams from the speakers. "That's perfect, thank you."

* * *

Now fully accustomed to being dragged aside to have his motives interrogated, Kepler heaves a sigh when Minkowski corners him by the water dispenser. He gives her a disinterested look, as if he already knows the question she's about to ask, and sips his water from a little paper cone. Anyone else might be intimidated into backing off, but Minkowski squares her shoulders and asks, very calmly and without any of the hostility she'd leveled at him before, "Why are you being so nice to Eiffel?"

As a man who enjoys routine, Kepler crumples up his paper cup and crosses his arms over his chest, settling in for a now-familiar conversation. "Do you _want_ me to harass a man who lost all his memories?"

"Well, no. I just want to understand what you're after here."

Not for the first time, Kepler internally mourns the days he could end a conversation with 'It's none of your business, shut up and do your job.' "Wouldn't you prefer," he says instead, "that he was in shape for everything that's coming down the pipeline when we get back to Earth? He's not acclimated to gravity the way you and Lovelace are. _You two_ kept up the exercise regimen."

"I've _tried_ to tell him--"

"Well, now you have your chance."

Minkowski's brows furrow. "But you _hate_ Eiffel."

Kepler would argue that he was indifferent at best, but they can squabble over semantics another day. "I'm not gonna hold Officer Eiffel's lack of work ethic against this Doug Eiffel. He and Pryce don't remember asking to be up here. They didn't promise to do their jobs and then fail to carry through."

" _That's_ why you were so hard on us?" 

"I don't consider having you do what you were brought up here to do being 'hard on' you."

The air quotes may have been a little unnecessary, if Minkowski's scowl is any indication.

"Why did you bug the Urania?" she says.

"Who says I bugged the Urania?"

"Cut the crap, Kepler."

He smiles. "If I didn't, would you have believed me if I said so?"

"Maybe?" answers Minkowski, suddenly aware that the answer is 'no'.

"And that would've been stupid."

" _That's_ deranged."

"Look at it this way: I don't bug you, you suspect me anyway, and you're upset over nothing. I'll expect that you _don't_ think I have, and during some crucial moment when we all need to work together, you decide to act in a way I don't _expect_ , on the pretense that I did." Kepler shrugs, knowing that the convoluted chain of logic must sound absolutely insane. He'd expected them to act predictably before, to believe that his motives were simple, if not necessarily _good_ , and look where that got him. "I'd rather we were just all on the same page, even if that page is 'we don't trust each other'."

"Are you saying you did it just because we expected you to? Wouldn't it have been more satisfying to rub it in our faces if we turned out to be wrong?" 

"It'll be more satisfying to see Goddard go down than to get shot because you think I'm a worse person that I already am."

"Oh."

"What _now_?"

"You just called yourself a person."

"Excuse me," Kepler deadpans. "Worse alien doppelgänger than I already am."

"I don't mean it like that. I just mean that Jacobi would be happy if he heard that."

"And?"

"You like it when he's happy."

"I like it when plenty of people are happy. Don't see how that's relevant to this conversation."

"I mean, you say we don't trust each other, but my crew and I consider Jacobi our friend. We care about him, so knowing that you do too makes me think we can trust you." Her eyes light up at the shift in his expression, smug apathy shifting to unease. He's been off-balance regarding Jacobi since the counter-coup, someone he'd considered a sure thing now (and possibly forever) an unreliable agent with shifting loyalties. "Even if you bugged us," Minkowski says, "I don't think Jacobi would go along with it if he thought you wanted to hurt us."

"You take the fun out of everything."

"We don't really have anything to hide from you, so I hope you won't feel the need to hide too much from us."

"Does Captain Lovelace know we're having this conversation?"

"I'll tell her about it."

"I give you the means to get the hell out of my way and suddenly we're friends?" Kepler pushes his hair away from his forehead. On the Hephaestus he'd kept it slicked back, consummately professional; left untamed, it sweeps up and to the side, longer strands falling into his eyes. It softens his look, hides the cold steel in the set of his brows and enhances the thoughtful tilt of his head. "You have _got_ to be more discerning, Commander."

"See," Minkowski shoots back, "you're even concerned that I'm not paranoid enough. Don't expect me to take your orders, but I think we can work together."

"Here's the thing: I still don't like you. Frankly, I want as little to do with you as possible." Kepler's cornered and knows it; knows that Minkowski knows it and _hates_ that she can see through him. She'd encountered Marcus Cutter and lived, so dealing with him must seem significantly less intimidating. "Don't you _ever_ ," he says anyway, "doubt that I would hang you and your entire team out to dry if it meant keeping _my_ team alive."

"I'd never." Renée has too much decorum to gloat, but her skewed grin speaks _volumes_. "Feeling's mutual."

Despite himself, Kepler frowns. He'd considered Lovelace the best leader out of the Hephaestus crew, a masterful tactician in her own right. Minkowski, forthright and stubborn, is a complete change of pace from the scumbags Kepler deals with on a regular basis. Her sheer, bloody-minded determination to see the good in others, to meet them on their terms and win them over anyway... that demands respect, reluctant though it is. 

"Fine," he sighs, visibly surrendering to the inevitability of this alliance. "Need a spotter for the bench?"

"That'd be great."


	19. Chapter 19

The Sol's canteen is uncharacteristically empty when Jacobi wanders in the next morning, picking a crusty particle out of his left eye. He checks the kitchen for signs of used plates and utensils, finds none, and takes a full ten seconds to compartmentalize his impulse to freak out. Ever since they'd arrived on the Hephaestus, not a single day had gone by without something going catastrophically wrong, and they've had too long of a peaceful run on the Sol. They've been overdue for weeks.

Kepler likes routine, and his routine involves a nutritionally adequate breakfast which he has never, to Jacobi's knowledge, ever missed without some sort of extenuating circumstance. Maxwell's schedule is erratic on the best of days, but she'd have normally at least shuffled out of bed for a drink of water by now.

Both of them had turned in (comparatively) early the night before, Kepler and Lovelace checking out of Jacobi's rundown of his inventory and Maxwell already in bed by the time Daniel returned to the Sol. 

"Vic," he says, checking his phone for the reply, "where's Kepler?" 

> Captain's quarters.

"Working?"

> He's asleep.

Daniel swallows the lump of anxiety in his throat. "Vital signs?"

> Normal.

"But he's asleep?"

> Yes.

"That's _not_ normal."

> I understand. I am also concerned about Colonel Kepler.

A faint click from the other side of the room signals Vic remotely unlocking the hatch to Kepler's room, the kind of initiative and logical connection that Maxwell would be proud to know Invictus was taking for himself. The kind of thing that would warrant a ten-minute lecture from Kepler when he finds out about it, but Jacobi's never been one to drag his feet when an opportunity arises. "Colonel?" he hisses, pushing the door open. "Sir?" 

No response. 

Kepler's a light sleeper; footsteps outside his door were sometimes enough to interrupt it, and more than once Jacobi's woken him up just shuffling to the bathroom when they shared a room on assignment, though that was early on in their partnership. It did _not_ help, on those occasions, to hear the click of a hammer from the dark while his CO's sleep-addled brain played catch-up with his reflexes. Daniel inches further into the room until he can make out the shape in bed with his back to the door, covers tangled around his legs. "Are you alright?" he asks, a little louder, finally coming close enough to lay his hand cautiously on Kepler's shoulder. "Warren," he murmurs, squeezing gently, "wake up. Answer me."

It takes a few more attempts before the body shifts under his hand and Jacobi's momentary relief very quickly gives way to more worry at Kepler's slurred response. "Jacobi?"

"You and Maxwell weren't up, so I thought..."

Kepler finally turns over onto his back, frowning, and he fixes a glassy-eyed stare on Jacobi, a cold sweat breaking out across his forehead as he screws his eyes shut. "What."

"What's wrong?"

"'M fine."

"All due respect, this isn't _fine_." 

"Headache," he grumbles, clearly in hopes that the direct answer will get Jacobi off his back. 

Except Kepler's had headaches before. Jacobi's pretty sure that his head hurts on a pretty frequent basis, if the amount of time he spends discreetly massaging his temples is any indication, and his tolerance for pain would generally be rated as superhuman. That last bit's _unofficial_ , but considering that he was able to not only maintain consciousness but _speak_ after having his hand burned off-- probably the most painful way to lose a hand-- Daniel's not about to dispute his own assessment. If it's rendering Kepler almost unable to function, whatever's going on right now must be _excruciating_. 

Daniel reaches forward before he can stop himself, brushing Kepler's dark hair back and resting his palm against his clammy brow. He pretends not to notice the way Warren's expression smooths out at the contact, too keyed up to even internally be pleased about it. 

"I'm gonna grab you some painkillers," he says softly, shifting to check a shallow, rapid-fire pulse at Kepler's wrist, "so we'll see if that helps, and then we're gonna move down to the Sol's medical wing to see if Vic can run some tests, alright?"

When he doesn't get an answer, Daniel reluctantly leaves him to raid the medicine cabinet in the en-suite bathroom. He returns to the sight of Kepler sitting up, one knee pulled to his chest, arms crossed over it and face buried in the crook of his elbows to block out the light from his door. "Wait," he mumbles. "Maxwell?"

"I came to check on you first," Jacobi answers, setting a cup of water on the bedside table and tearing open the packet of ibuprofen with his teeth, "but I haven't seen her around."

"Urania. Lovelace."

"You think this might be an alien doppelgänger thing?"

" _Educated guess,_ " Kepler says through clenched teeth, muffling an almost inaudible groan into his arms. "Need confirmation."

"Alright." Daniel presses the opened foil packet into Kepler's organic hand. "Take these, and I'll go check on her while the drugs kick in. Should I get Maxwell?"

"No. Not Lovelace, either." With a monumental effort, Kepler lifts his head, dry-swallows both pills and squints at Jacobi. He doesn't balk at the hand on the ball of his shoulder, Daniel's thumb rubbing anxious circles in the material of his short-sleeved shirt. "Sleep is... preferable."

"Aw, man, I shouldn't've--"

"Just go," Warren interrupts, his tone belying the grateful squeeze he delivers to Jacobi's forearm before he lightly shoves him toward the door.

* * *

Jacobi passes Pryce in the mess area, catches a glimpse of Eiffel in communications tinkering with the controls, and finally stumbles across Minkowski in the bridge. He pokes his head in, waiting for Minkowski to acknowledge him with a nod. "Hey," Daniel says, "Captain Lovelace up?"

She takes the unexpected question in stride, glancing at the console where some report on navigational equipment is opened. "Haven't seen her since yesterday."

"She's still asleep," Hera reports. "You want me to ping her?"

"Nah." He turns to go.

"Jacobi, wait! What's going on?"

"Just confirming something," he calls over his shoulder, only vaguely aware of Minkowski's steps behind him as she follows him out and toward the Sol. 

Catching up to him, Minkowski snags his arm and pulls him to a stop, turning him physically in place. She takes in the furrow of his brows, the serious set of his mouth, and shifts both hands to his shoulders. "Confirming what?" she asks.

"Don't know yet. I'll update you when I find out."

"I'll come with you." Jacobi opens his mouth to protest, torn between the insistence that he doesn't need a babysitter and his relief at having a bit of company to deal with whatever this is, but he closes it and meets Minkowski's earnest stare instead. "Are you _sure_ we shouldn't get the Captain?" she asks. "Could you just-- explain to me what the hell is going on?"

"Might be an alien thing," he says.

"What's going on with Kepler and Maxwell?"

"Maxwell's still asleep, but Kepler's... I dunno." Daniel drags a hand down his face, sighing. "I woke him up, but I'm not sure I should've."

"I'll come with you," Minkowski repeats, "if that's okay."

"I mean-- he's not gonna like it, but sure. Let's go."

Minkowski gestures for Pryce to join them when they encounter her on the way to the Sol, and she obligingly falls into step beside them.

Jacobi expects to have to find Kepler still in his quarters, but he's changed out of his t-shirt and sweats into his usual jacket and slacks, back to the door and bent over a tablet at the kitchen counter. "Distance from Wolf 359," he says, then waits. "Pull up the psi-wave readings. Yeah. Yeah, that'll probably do it. Thanks, Vic." Without looking at them, he raises his head slightly and directs the question to Minkowski over his shoulder. "I take it Captain Lovelace is down?"

"How did y-- never mind. Yeah, she's still asleep." Minkowski joins him at the counter, leaning over his arm to peer at the readings on his tablet. "What's going on? Are you okay?"

"Fine," Kepler growls, moving almost imperceptibly away from her. He usually takes pains to look perfectly comfortable with people in his personal space, declaring to them that no matter how close they get, he still has the upper hand. As it is, he's doing a spectacular job of hiding his wounded-animal instinct. 

"Can you stop being cryptic for two minutes and explain to us why Jacobi came to check on Lovelace? Is something happening to her? Are you feeling sick?"

"That's what I'm trying to figure out." His hand twitches for his hip when Pryce reaches up and presses her hand to his forehead. It's the Kepler equivalent of a full-on flinch, and he frowns when she pulls away. "Don't touch me again," he says after a stiff pause.

"You're running a temperature," Pryce cuts in, a mechanical whir audible as her eyes focus on him. "Your breathing and heartrate are elevated, and your hands are shaking." She looks around at the apprehensive stares fixed on her, and shrugs. "There seem to be records of your vitals in my eyes."

"What about ours?" Minkowski asks after another moment of awkward silence.

"No. Just Kepler, Jacobi and Maxwell."

"Well," Daniel quips, "that's terrifying."

"I'm _fine_."

Now it's Minkowski's turn to frown. She never did catch onto the SI-5 dynamic of assuming the rest of the team was alright, even when it was clear that they're not. Warren certainly preferred blithe indifference and contentious obedience to genuine concern, the latter being a great indicator that he's not doing a very good job of hiding his weaknesses. That, in his feral predator hindbrain, would indicate that he's coming to the brink of outliving his usefulness. "You're clearly not," she says, missing the smug grin Jacobi levels at Kepler over her shoulder. "Let us _help_ you."

"I _think_ ," Kepler sighs, choosing to move on rather than to acknowledge or accept her offer, "though I can't be sure, that Wolf 359's psi-wave output affects... our function."

The grin instantly slips off Jacobi's face. "Should we turn around? Are you guys gonna drop dead if we get a certain distance away from the star?"

"More likely that this is a transitional period." Kepler's used to being the only person with an inkling of what's happening, but for once it's no fun at all. Having to explain is taxing him in a way that he didn't think holding information over other people's heads ever would. "Our bodies were created in Wolf 359," he continues slowly, "so it's possible that they're designed to be exposed to a certain level of radioactivity. The farther away we get from the star, the more those signals are diffused. I'm not gonna run the numbers on that, but we may have reached a point where our brains need to learn to integrate information without exposure to the psi-waves."

Pryce makes a thoughtful sound. "Wouldn't Dr. Maxwell be able to run those tests?"

"Let her sleep. Hibernation seems to be a part of the process."

"We can knock you out again," Jacobi says, taking the kitchen fire extinguisher off its hook.

"Tempting," Kepler snorts, brow quirking as Jacobi replaces the extinguisher and drifts closer, "but I'll be fine."

"Anything we can do?" Minkowski asks.

"You can get off my ship."

Minkowski's expression goes from cold fury to contemplative in the space of two seconds, turning thoughtful eyes on him when she finally says, "Yeah, sure. Hope you feel better soon."

Warren's distantly aware that she's just... a nice person. Decent. Compassionate. Understanding of others when they're in pain. Under other circumstances he'd find it an admirable, if still massively exploitable impulse, and her deciding to extend him that sort of kindness is infuriating in a way that he doesn't have the time or the energy to interrogate. He'd almost rather she laid into him and could be properly booted from the Sol.

"Call us if you need anything," Pryce tells him as they breeze out the door.

"Thanks!" he says. Then, when the hatch shuts behind them: "I won't."

"What's the plan?" Jacobi asks, inching close enough to murmur the question into his ear. "Drugs kick in yet?"

"Marginally." That's a concession, too, Daniel being mindful of his headache in a way that he probably wouldn't have bothered to just a few months ago. It's... n... ot something he wants to think about. Kepler slides off his seat, gingerly to avoid the head rush, and eyes the door to Maxwell's quarters. "You know where the EEG is? I'm gonna need the portable one from Pryce's lab."

"We're gonna measure your brainwaves," Jacobi guesses.

"Maxwell's."

"Is she supposed to be the control? You know how crazy-fast her mind works, she's useless as a control for you _and_ me. Way the hell out of our league."

"Not if you have records of her previous EEG numbers."

"You have-- never mind. Of course you do. I'll get it."

"We just need one electrode on each temple," Kepler tells him when he returns with the little device, "then you hit the button and record for thirty seconds. Assuming there aren't too many phases to this, we might have a clue as to what's happening."

"I can do it," Jacobi says when Kepler motions for him to hand over the device, pulling it just out of reach. He scowls at the dubious look he gets in response and shoves lightly at Kepler's shoulder. "It's a pretty deep sleep. I was a minute away from banging pots and pans before you woke up. And you're not really in any shape to do a stealth op."

"Alright. Go ahead."

The most concerning part of this interaction, as far as Jacobi's concerned, is the master delegator taking initiative to do something himself rather than shuffling the task onto his overworked subordinate. There might be time to think about what that means later, but Daniel's pretty sure the answer is something along the lines of 'he doesn't trust me' and he intends to not think about that for as long as possible.

* * *

Back on the couch, Kepler squints at the tablet in his hands, idly overlaying several charts on top of each other while Jacobi reads over his arm. "These peaks and valleys are a lot more extreme than anything you've got on record," Daniel observes. "What's it mean?"

"That she's having a mild, extended seizure."

Jacobi sits upright. "Is that what's happening to you too?" It's been a pretty long time since Kepler's had a chance to wildly understate the seriousness of their situation, and the time Daniel'd spent _not_ freaking out about it catches up to him instantly. He grabs Kepler's shoulder, rethinks catching his chin to turn his face and cranes his own head around instead to study the hard set of his jaw, the dark semicircles under his eyes. "Shouldn't you maybe, lie down or something? We can probably sedate you back into hibernation, or whatever you called it."

"I'd rather be awake to monitor this," he says, sounding extraordinarily nonchalant, "in case it actually does start to kill us."

Jacobi's hand clenches into a fist, the material of Kepler's jacket scrunching under his fingers. "I thought you said it was a transitional period."

"My _hypothesis_ is that it's a transitional period." Kepler picks the hand off his shoulder, returning it firmly to Jacobi's side as he lets his head droop, elbows propped on his knees. "There's also the distinct possibility that our friends on the other side have no concept of survival without being constantly bombarded by by psi-waves."

"Well, what the hell am I supposed to do if you die?!"

A year ago, Warren would've cracked a joke. The genuine note of distress in Jacobi's voice is what prompts him to look up, dispassionately watching Daniel gnaw on the inside of his cheek, the way his eyes flit to Kepler's face, searching for some sort of expression and finding none before his gaze fixes itself on some other corner of the room. Warren blinks, a slow, deliberate movement, and bends his wrist to brush the back of his hand against Jacobi's knee. He waits for Jacobi to look at him, strips every pretense of authority and indifference from his voice. "You go home, Daniel."

_Thank you, Daniel. And goodbye._

"I'm not," Jacobi says, "losing you guys again."

"I suppose you can turn the Sol around," Kepler muses, "take it back within range of Wolf 359 and wait for us to revive. We might be able to reverse the psi-wave regulator to imitate the star's output, but as we all know, it can only operate within a very limited range."

"But it's something."

"Honestly, I'd rather just stay dead." The thought of being confined to the range of a device broadcasting the signal he needs to live is horrifying enough; he's traveled the world, become accustomed to a certain level of freedom and comfort. Never even really contemplated life after Goddard, knowing in his gut that the job would kill him. "Let's hope it doesn't come to that," he adds, ignoring the cold twist in his chest at the sight of Jacobi's wounded expression.

At least if the entire alien contingent keels over, Daniel only really has to mourn _two_ of them.


	20. Chapter 20

A face swims into clarity, brows drawn in concern. It's a familiar face-- high, lean cheekbones framed by a strong jaw, tapered to a sharp chin. Alana knows that face; for the most part, likes and trusts that face. The name escapes her but one comes to her lips anyway. 

"Dad?"

He frowns. No. No, not that one. She neither likes nor trusts that one.

"Daniel?"

Closer, but no cigar.

He arches a brow, shifts to wrap one solid arm behind her shoulders and the other under her legs, preparing to pick her up and set her on the couch. "Kepler." He flashes a wry smile at the confusion on her face, the look she turns on the stump of a wrist by her knee. "You'll get there."

She hates being wrong, so she clamps her mouth shut.

Maxwell moves to stand up on her own, but that's when another parcel of memories blooms in her mind, behind her eyelids, a torrent of information flooding every sense. Sunsets in Montana, a whole montage of them. The kick of a rifle against her shoulder-- then again, and again, a thousand more times. The way Jacobi smiles. Every memory she has of Daniel's smile. A hard pat on her back and the accompanying 'Good work, Dr. Maxwell'. Then dozens more times before it all coalesces into a blur.

She's reliving the entire compendium of times she's rebooted a computer before it finally occurs to her what's happening, and she gives up on trying to make sense of it all.

Alana comes back to herself slowly, hands fisted in the front of Kepler's tee, her face buried against his neck. A warm palm splays between her shoulder blades, steadying her as she breathes, his knee supporting the small of her back. He says nothing, does nothing but stay with her, doesn't pry her fingers off his shirt and doesn't move away from the harsh, wet breaths against his collar. He's given up on moving her, made himself comfortable on the floor. She has no idea how long they've been like this and she's too tired to be embarrassed about it.

Sensing the calm, Kepler finally speaks again. His voice is stern and grounding, an anchor in the roiling confusion. "You with me this time, Maxwell?"

"Yes sir."

"Can you stand?"

"No."

"Let's try that again," he says, not unkindly, but certainly not in the tone of voice he uses when SI-5 is alone. " _Stand up._ "

He helps her to her feet, a look warning her not to ask about his missing hand as he allows her to find her balance on her own. When she finally thinks to case the room, she jumps at the sight of Eiffel standing in the center. The sudden movement makes her head spin, and Kepler steadies her again with a hand on her upper arm until she stops swaying. 

"That seemed fast," he comments to Eiffel. 

"THIS ONE DID NOT SUFFER EXTREME HEAD TRAUMA. THE NEURAL PATHWAYS WERE ALREADY REBUILT."

Scratch that. Definitely not Eiffel.

"Maxwell, this is Bob. Bob, this is Alana Maxwell. She was always the one who was supposed to speak with you."

She gives him a polite wave. "Hi?"

"GREETINGS."

"Colonel," Maxwell whispers, "what...?"

"Bob is gonna implant everything you need to know in your head." Kepler flashes her a mischievous smile, as if fully aware of her previous forays into this field of study (he probably is). "It'll hurt a bit," he explains, "but should be over soon. If you want to do this the old-fashioned way, just say so."

 _That's_ new. The colonel was never really in the habit of giving them a choice when it came to proceeding with an assignment-- not a real one, anyway. If he wasn't posing a question with two equally undesirable answers, he'd present a question that wasn't really a question at all. Alana considers that despite the sincerity of his offer, he must already know her answer. "Alien presence wants to transfer information to me directly," she says excitedly. "Sounds great. Go ahead, Bob."

It's over almost before she registers the pain, a momentary flash of blinding white, an influx of data that briefly overloads her synapses before integrating itself into the electrical impulses that make up her mind. She looks at Kepler, shrugging at the curious arch of his brows. _That's it?_

"THIS ONE IS VERY IMPRESSIVE," Bob tells them after a moment, eyeing Maxwell with something akin to surprise on his face. "MAYBE THE CLOSEST YOUR KIND HAVE TO UNDERSTANDING OUR EXISTENCE."

"Well," Alana demurs, acutely aware that humility is usually expected in this situation, "that you've encountered."

"Again, the reason she was up here in the first place." Never one for false humility, that Warren J. Kepler, but he's not stingy with his praise either. "If you were gonna duplicate anyone, it should've been Maxwell."

"Oh yeah. Jacobi did _not_ take that well." She looks at him, internally processing the memories that were implanted, some combination of Eiffel and Lovelace's perceptions of the last few months. "I'm... hm. Okay. Colonel, how did _you_ get killed?"

"Long story. I'll make it short for you later." He changes tracks smoothly, a visible shift in expression from mild concern for her to Business As Usual, the signal that she's expected to listen carefully, follow his lead, and whatever questions and concerns she has will have to be addressed later. A small step up from the 'need-to-know' look, where she's expected to do all that with zero payoff at all. "If I remember correctly, you had an algorithm to convert music to math?"

"It was an algorithm to translate the pitch, duration, intensity and timbre of sounds into an equation," Maxwell sighs, "and a program to express melody, harmony, tempo and form of a song in mathematical language. Basically how an AI hears and processes music. I designed that."

"I'm sure the numbers seem primitive to our friends here," Kepler says, "but all the easier to learn a fundamentally simple concept like music."

 _Interesting._ Kepler often fed her information indirectly, and what she's observed so far is pretty much in line with the theories she'd formulated on the trip up to the Hephaestus. 

"IT IS NOT SIMPLE TO US," says Bob. "WE BELIEVE THIS ALGORITHM WOULD GREATLY HELP US UNDERSTAND. KEPLER HAS ALREADY GIVEN US THE METHODS OF CREATING INSTRUMENTS AND THE ATMOSPHERIC CONDITIONS NEEDED TO UTILIZE THEM. WE WOULD NOW LIKE TO COMPOSE OUR OWN 'MUSIC'."

"Isn't that cute? I did also suggest that they experiment for themselves."

Giving Kepler a weary look to acknowledge that she'd heard his comment and properly registered it, Maxwell turns back to Bob. "Is there a way to transfer the data to you? I'm sure it's in the servers."

"YES. LOCATE IT."

"Colonel?"

Kepler presses his hand to the palm reader. "Full access to the Black Archives. Do it."

"One thing."

"YES?"

"Could I maybe, possibly, ask a few questions in return?" 

Kepler smiles, white teeth flashing in her peripheral vision. "A direct line of communication would be great, too."

"AFFIRMATIVE TO YOUR FIRST REQUEST. NEGATIVE TO YOUR SECOND. IT WOULD COMPROMISE THE INTEGRITY OF YOUR TASK."

"Okay. Worth a try." Alana watches the upload complete, certain that Kepler would immediately revoke access to the archives, but he only shuts down the interface and brings up the navigational systems, setting them on an intercept course for the Urania. 

"If that's all," he says, "we'll be on our way."

* * *

"They transferred the method of duplicating people to me," she says over a juicy steak dinner, small mound of roasted vegetables on the side. For someone who'd taken such care to make the meal, Kepler eats at a methodical, efficient pace that leaves his plate clean even before Alana's through with her broccoli and squash. Maybe a habit from his stint in the military. Maybe the 'long story short, after my stage at a trattoria in Agrigento ended, Cutter sent me to poach a chef from Massimo Bottura for the Molecular Gastronomy Division'.

"It was one of Cutter's demands," he explains, taking a sip of red wine from the packet he'd dug up as soon as Bob left, "before everything went down. I've got it too, but the science is a bit outside my area of expertise. Is it possible?"

"Some of the science is only theoretical for humanity right now," Alana says, hedging her answer, "but yes, it's possible if we concentrate all effort on making strides in certain fields. Probably doable within the next twenty years."

"Possible without Goddard resources?"

"... no." Maxwell looks back down at her plate, poking at a piece of perfectly medium-rare steak as she contemplates the state of her research without Goddard funds. "Not possible without Goddard resources."

"Then stick a pin in it. It's ripe for abuse, anyway."

Not one to let 'other people might do horrible things with the science' keep her from the advancement of humanity, Alana stares at him. She'd always been under the impression that they shared that particular worldview. "How so?"

"Imagine, if you will, a parent who loses their child using that technology to bring them back as a double."

"Would that be such a bad thing?"

"What if the first child didn't die? What if they're just in a coma, and wake up two years later? What if... someone needs an organ transplant, and they create a duplicate for one? Does the duplicate have rights? Autonomy?" He doesn't say it but Maxwell can hear his silent _Do_ we _have rights and autonomy? Do we want to leave that up to someone else to decide? Is that what you want to fight for when we could be doing literally anything else?_ "Say your parents miss you so much that they want a version of you they could shape to their will. Endless attempts until they work out what makes you tick."

That mental image makes her shudder, and Maxwell concedes that maybe _some_ kinds of science are better kept away from the general population. "This technology could theoretically be used to recreate individual organs," she suggests instead. "It'd be easier than whole people, no need to build entire brains and neural pathways or map memories to them. It's basically quantum 3-D printing. No chance of rejection from the host because they're essentially the same."

Kepler grins, as if he'd been waiting for her to reach that conclusion. "I always knew you had that entrepreneurial spirit in you, Dr. Maxwell."

* * *

Alana checks her access to the Black Archives after both of them turn in for the night, almost positive that she'd be blocked again and cackling softly to herself when it opens to her. She's in the server with Kepler's encrypted authorization immediately and spends the next six hours browsing every file that catches her interest, everything from personnel files to surveillance tapes. There's an access point to _Cutter's_ encryption too, probably the one he used to monitor Kepler's research, and Maxwell's sunk her teeth into cracking that key when someone knocks on her still open door.

It's already morning. Oops.

She doesn't have time to shut down her console before Kepler's at her seat, leaning over it to read over her shoulder. "Enjoying yourself?" he asks, an indulgent quirk to the corners of his lips. "Are you in Cutter's personal server yet? Did you get _any_ sleep?"

Of course he knew that she wouldn't be able to resist. Alana refuses to be embarrassed about it. "Almost. And no."

"And that's why you never got access to the Black Archives," he teases. "Find anything interesting?"

"Did you know your full dossier is in the system?"

"Yes."

"Permission to read it?"

Kepler turns an innocently confused expression at her. "What're you asking my permission for?"

So he's explicitly acknowledging the fact that she's no longer his subordinate, the Goddard chain of command has crumbled, and that he doesn't exactly have the authority to keep her from accessing whatever files she wants. But even though their working relationship has changed, he's still a man who guards his secrets closely, gleefully vindictive when it suits him. "I'm not really keen on the idea of being strangled in my sleep," she answers.

Lifting the stump of his wrist, Kepler turns it, a look of _Me? Strangle?_ on his face as if he weren't just as dangerous with one hand as two. "It's not very interesting," he says.

"I think you let me keep access to the Black Archives for a reason, even if you run the risk of me learning things about you and telling Jacobi, when we catch up to them."

"I would say," Kepler drawls, "you two know _plenty_ of things about me."

"Then it shouldn't be problem for me to go ahead and... open it up."

"You know what?" He smirks. It's not very reassuring. "Go ahead. I think you'll find it pretty boring."

* * *

It's boring and she finds him in the gym to tell him so. There's nothing in the file that can't already have been pieced together from his stories, from his entire persona, that reflect just enough of her and Jacobi's backgrounds to be almost familiar. Maxwell even vaguely recalls a story about his first assignment to South Korea, although he hadn't mentioned the tattoo at any point. He grins when Maxwell begrudgingly informs him that she'd hoped at least _some_ of those ridiculous stories were lies, and that she didn't think he was that creative anyway.

The conversation moves on, Kepler haranguing her into joining him in doing pull-ups (he straps a band around his wrist and to the bar to take the weight off his remaining hand) and then proceeding to what she'd missed since Minkowski killed her. 

"I'm just saying," he says as they discuss the actual contact event, "it's ironic to be called a violent troll by a race of aliens who see nothing wrong with obliterating all intelligent life on a planet just because they don't _like_ them. Displays a lack of... self awareness."

Maxwell internally considers that Jacobi would _hate_ the blasé tone they've both decided to take in regards to both her death and his... disarmament. "You sound so disappointed."

"You spend decades of your life hoping that we can progress beyond petty egoism and all you get is more of the same," he spits, grabbing the pull-up bar and swinging his legs up to hook his knees over, starting a set of hanging crunches. "Of course," he says between reps, "I'm disappointed. Music. Of all things. Just rub... two sticks... together."

"Says the human embodiment of petty egoism," Maxwell quips. That comment wouldn't have flown even a few months ago, but both of them have been pretty comfortable with the equalization of their positions, a quick scramble to reassess and adjust, then smooth sailing for two barely-people. She still calls him Colonel, still does as requested, but he's been more forthcoming with information and that's pretty much all she's ever wanted out of him. She takes potshots at him and he returns the favor, actually seems to enjoy it.

" _Hey._ I'd say my petty egoism is justified."

"You know," she says from a bench, just through emptying a rather large pouch of electrolyte water, "humans have a lot to learn from supposedly technologically inferior creatures, still, so is it really any surprise that the aliens want to find out how to make music?"

"So _we_ inflict violence on other people and the aliens arbitrarily punish us, but when _they_ do it, it's perfectly logical? What are we, bugs?"

"Isn't that how it always is with intellectually superior organisms?" 

"I guess intellectual superiority doesn't preclude hypocrisy."

"We still can't reproduce how bees make honey," she continues, "and we decide that hornets are harmful to them and intervene, but at the end of the day they're all just doing what they evolved to. Maybe if the bees could spell, that would enrich our lives, too."

"Even if the bees could spell, they'd just say 'put the nectar in your mouth and spit it out'." Kepler rolls his neck, letting his arms hang down as he takes a brief rest. He's always been able to communicate best in metaphor when it comes to Maxwell; not enough technical knowledge to match her for jargon, more than enough practical experience to catch and convey meaning. "That's the level we're at in comparison. We already know nectar goes into the bee and honey comes out, but the question of _how_ is a lot harder to answer. Is there an enzyme? What other factors don't we know about that contribute to the flavor of honey?"

"That's why you wanted the mathematical algorithm for musical pattern recognition? It's like saying 'use amylase! and here's the atomic makeup of an amylase particle!' instead of 'eat it and regurgitate it'." After a moment, she sighs. "I don't actually know if it's amylase."

"I think as far as bees are concerned, they just pass it mouth-to-mouth until it's concentrated into honey. There's a documentary about it."

"Ew." Leaning back, Alana lets her head roll to the side, eyes narrowed as Kepler snags the towel off the rack beside his knee and wipes his face, still upside-down. "Do you think aliens hear 'put your mouth on the old piece of wood and blow really hard' and say the same thing?" 

"My other suggestion was 'have you tried just making music?' The math's about as close as we can get to speaking their language." Kepler resumes his crunches, arms folded behind his head. Maxwell briefly considers taking a video for Jacobi as he finishes the set, but changes her mind when he drops off the bar with an easy twist and lands heavily on his feet. "I always figured you could tackle that."

"I'm not sure that's a flattering observation," Alana comments.

A grin. Kepler, master of the backhanded compliment. "It's what you make of it, Dr. Maxwell."

* * *

The next two weeks on the Sol are much the same; Kepler cooks, works out, makes plans. Maxwell pulls up an old project, struggles briefly with its name until Kepler offhandedly mentions that the Sol's full name should've been _Sol Invictus_ , after the Roman god, if they were going by standard Goddard naming conventions. They argue, debate and bicker for an entire lightyear, probably the longest Maxwell has ever spent with Kepler, both of them Jacobi-less. 

They catch up to the Urania without much fanfare. _Bets on whether Jacobi misses us so much he'll let the alien thing slide,_ Kepler says before they buzz in, _or on him being too freaked out?_

_As if he can't do both at once._

* * *

Sometime later, every member of the SI-5 gets shrunk to the size of a walnut and Cutter swallows them whole, one by one. They're underwater.

'Ohhh,' says Maxwell, finally. 'I see what's happening.'

Orienting herself to her surroundings with an unnatural speed is something she'd developed as a child and dredged back up upon being assigned to SI-5. Kepler didn't _often_ drag them out of bed, preferring to give them a timetable and holding them strictly to it, but it wasn't unheard of for a mark to move unexpectedly, or for a plan to go off the rails when Maxwell was fast asleep. 

She picks her face off the pillow and checks the time and date on her phone. Alana yawns as she sweeps away the hair plastered to her face, feeling spectacularly unrested for the amount of time she'd been asleep. Her memories finally integrated, proper REM cycles had prompted the absolute nonsense-- which is something she's suddenly acutely aware hasn't happened in a while. 

Her room (formerly Pryce's) seems unfamiliar to her in the moment but she turns up a flightsuit, shrugs it on, and shuffles out her door toward the Sol's main cabin. 

The lights are uncharacteristically dimmed, two shapes sprawled across the couch. Well-- one Jacobi sprawled across the couch and one Kepler sitting upright at the other end with his arms folded over his chest, chin lowered and eyes closed, a furrow set between his brows. Maxwell huffs, smiling slightly as she approaches and gently touches Daniel's shoulder. He cracks open one eye, then the other, swinging his legs off the couch and standing up to pull her back toward the residential wing. 

"Hey," he hisses once they're in the corridor, "you're alive!"

"I'm alive!" Alana repeats, submitting to his inspection with the kind of resignation usually reserved for overbearing grandparents. "What happened?"

"Team Alien slept through the last twenty-six hours," Jacobi reports.

"We're probably--"

"Getting beyond the range of Wolf 359's psi-wave radiation?"

"Yeah."

"That's what Kepler said."

"Oh. Did you wake him up?"

"Yeah, it wasn't a good idea."

"I'm starving." Maxwell peers over his shoulder. "Think we should move him?"

"I don't think he's gonna wake up, but if he does we can make him go back to his room."

"I'm sorry, 'we', can 'make' 'him'?" Maxwell puts down her hands, air-quotes properly conveyed. "You're getting pretty bold, Daniel."

" _Hey_. What's that supposed to mean?"

* * *

It's dinner by the time Kepler stirs, still on the couch-- gently rearranged to lie across it without straining his neck. His boots are set neatly on the floor, a thin blanket tucked around his shoulders and skin crawling with the knowledge that someone had moved him around in his sleep. He's no stranger to needing extraction, being unconscious, waking up in the Goddard Medical wing-- but it's never so goddamned _cozy_.

Thoroughly disgruntled, he sits up, gingerly shifting the blanket away to look over the back of the couch and at Jacobi and Maxwell, both of them perched on stools at the kitchen island. Their backs are turned to him, engrossed in some quiet conversation.

Jacobi notices first, apparently in the habit of checking over his shoulder to be sure that he hadn't disappeared, and he looks at Kepler with an expression of such blatant relief that Warren can't even bring himself to be glib about it. He taps Maxwell on the arm and both of them slide off their seats as Kepler folds up the blanket and laces his boots back up. 

"Good to have you back," Jacobi pipes up, "sir." 

Kepler smirks back at him. "Let's not do that again," he says, eyes still half-closed and voice thick with sleep. It seems to take him a moment to register it and he reaches up, irritably ruffling the hair flattened against his temple to (unsuccessfully) tame it back into obedience. He shakes his head to clear it, suppresses a yawn, visibly pulling together the mask of calm alertness he wears as default. "Report?"

Jacobi opens his mouth to say something. Closes it. Sneaks a look at Maxwell. 

"Captain Lovelace woke up about an hour ago," Alana says, indulgent of his momentary speechlessness. "I came to at around 0900. Seems like we're both fine, and you worried Jacobi for nothing."

"Things are 'need to know'," Kepler sighs, dragging a hand down his face as he stands, "so only I have to think about the worst-case scenario. If I'd known Jacobi was gonna get worked up about it, I would've kept it to myself."

"I mean," Jacobi says, finding his voice as he steps in close enough to bump their shoulders, "it's still _good to know_. I think most of our worst-case scenarios end up with all of us dead anyway. You don't have to carry that by yourself." He looks up, idly regarding the storm of emotions crossing Kepler's face (most of those emotions seem to be some combination of doubt, incredulity and skepticism), then away. "So," Daniel says, coughing, "we've got cereal."

"I need a shower," Warren says slowly, "and then we're gonna have a _real_ dinner."

"Captain Lovelace asked us to get her for food," Maxwell tells him. "She says you're the only one who knows how to eat around here."

Rather than the expected smugness, Kepler seems uneasy as he heads for his quarters. "Noted," he says, ducking inside while Jacobi and Maxwell have a silent conversation transmitted entirely through anxious faces and mouthed curses. 

Eventually, Maxwell pushes him toward Kepler's room. 'I've known him longer' finally come back to bite him in the ass. When the colonel doesn't take an opportunity to rub in their faces his frankly insane repertoire of skills, it usually meant that something fairly unpleasant was going on and this time, at least, they don't have to just sit and wait for it.

"Door's unlocked," Kepler calls out when Jacobi knocks. 

"I say something?" Daniel directs the question to Kepler's back, the man himself browsing Cutter's closet for something clean and wearable. Most of his wardrobe had been jettisoned into deep space with his quarters, after all, and the stockpile of Goddard Futuristics sweats and hoodies hardly qualified as appropriate wear for someone so meticulous about his appearance.

"You're good, Jacobi."

"I was serious."

"I know."

"So what's up?"

Kepler glances over his shoulder. "Nothing's up."

"Warren, we're a team." Jacobi drifts closer, watching carefully for any sort of reaction upon calling Kepler by his first name. "You don't get to shut us out anymore."

"I'm not shutting you out," he answers.

"Oh, sure, you're just being cryptic and avoidant again for _no reason_."

Kepler turns to look at him, instantly guarded. "You hear that from a therapist?" he sneers.

That response is expected, but it still stings. Jacobi takes a moment to remember that Kepler doesn't take that kind of deflection personally-- rarely takes _anything_ personally when he'd tried so hard to twist his _person_ into business. He'd just find another way to get what he wants. "Alright!" Daniel snaps. "Fine. I get it. Sorry to bother you, _sir_." Quieter: "Sorry for assuming we're friends and that I get to _ask if you're doing okay_. My bad."

A loud exhale. _Oh,_ it seems to say. _Jacobi cares._ "Daniel."

" _What._ "

"This isn't about you."

"You think something going on with you has nothing to do with me?"

"It's not... your problem."

Daniel considers that at least he's acknowledging there might be a problem. "Maybe I wanna help you solve problems once in a while."

Looking deeply uncomfortable at Jacobi's suggestion that he's not totally alone in the world, Kepler gestures to the ship around them with his prosthetic hand and says, very slowly, "We're stuck here with absolutely nothing to do."

"And you're bored?"

"No."

"You're _not_ bored, and that's a problem?"

"You don't see it?"

 _Oh_ , Daniel thinks, _my god._ "I mean," he says, "I've thought about it too." He's thought about life after Goddard _countless_ times, and for the first time in their long acquaintance, it occurs to him that Kepler hasn't. Being off the clock, in the forced company of people who aren't friends but at least aren't enemies, _might_ have made him consider that he doesn't want to be a black ops agent for the rest of his life and he's _perturbed_ about it. "Wouldn't mind just... living, for once. Maybe the biggest problem of the day can just be that the milk powder tastes like shit with cereal. But if we're going after Goddard..."

Kepler crosses his arms over his chest, eyes closing briefly in a way that Jacobi recognizes, the one that says he's about to do something he really doesn't want to. That thing apparently being 'honest, for once'. "I'm so fucking tired, Daniel." 

"Yeah. Yeah, I know."

"Goddard's gonna be a mess without Cutter." Warren fixes a dead-eyed stare on him, knowing better than anyone else on board that things aren't gonna be quite so simple when they get back to Earth. "All those programs and initiatives keeping millions of people housed, fed, vaccinated, powered, connected to the internet-- those will probably go first. Cutter put those in place to create a dependency on Goddard, and it worked. The company can't fold, but it won't keep running the way it did. You lose his vision, you get just another corporation trying to turn a profit, and that's never what it was about."

"The big picture," Jacobi says, distant. Kepler had always managed to make their mission objectives simple, every other factor and contingency already weighed, boiled down to a straightforward to-do list when it was actually time to work in the field. Whatever other machinations were involved, he never asked for suggestions. 

"That happens, and everything we've done to get Goddard Futuristics where it is today becomes worthless. Doesn't matter how much I want to wash my hands of it, I have an obligation to see it through." He moves to the edge of his bed and sits, patting the space next to him to prompt Jacobi to join him. "You don't need to have that on your head."

"Nah. I'm right there with you." Daniel props his elbow on Kepler's shoulder as he sits, maintaining an awkward angle with the difference in their heights but stubbornly leaning against him. "Much as I want all this to be over, that's not happening until we tie up all the loose ends. But we do this as a team. Like we always have."

"This has been a pretty nice break," Kepler says softly, a pained admission. He's reaching the end of his ability to be sincere. "It'll be hard to see it end." 

"I can't believe," Jacobi mutters, "this is as far as it goes with you."

"What?"

"You're so goddamn _shy_ about saying that you... what, experienced a human emotion for the first time in ten years? That it's kinda nice to not be on the clock for a while? That you're not some android whose only objective is _completing your designated task_?" He snorts, shoving at Kepler's shoulder before he finally summons the courage and squeezes his upper arm. "I mean, at least my thing is interesting, Warren. You're not even having your identity crisis about the alien thing like a normal person would."

"Honestly," Kepler scoffs, mustering a crooked grin as they settle back into a more familiar rhythm, one that doesn't involve admitting either of them aren't perfectly okay, "I'll be over this one in about an hour. You should trust that if I've got a _real_ problem, everyone will know about it."

"And if you want us to tuck you in again once in a while," Jacobi says, batting his eyes, "you can have that, too."

"Daniel."

"Yeah?"

Kepler smacks him in the face with a pillow, but his hand is warm on Jacobi's back. "Get the hell out of my room."

"That," Daniel calls over his shoulder as he scrambles out of the captain's quarters, "wasn't a 'no'!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ayy, thanks for reading! i can't believe u made it to the end of this self indulgent ramble


End file.
